Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum 2.0

Lex Fridman (01:23.140)

Also known as Shiba Token, code SHIB,

Vitalik Buterin (01:27.320)

for context, Shiba Inu was created in August 2020,

Lex Fridman (01:31.440)

modeled off of Dogecoin by the anonymous founder

Vitalik Buterin (01:34.960)

known as Ryoshi.

Lex Fridman (01:37.380)

On May 10th this year, it had a market capitalization

Vitalik Buterin (01:42.120)

of over 13 billion.

Lex Fridman (01:45.300)

And maybe you can explain this, but in a crazy move,

Vitalik Buterin (01:48.440)

you were given half of SHIB's total supply.

Lex Fridman (01:52.760)

You burned, a.k.a. destroyed 90% of it.

Vitalik Buterin (01:58.480)

That's worth $6.7 billion.

Lex Fridman (02:03.480)

And you donated 10%, that's worth 1.2 billion at the time

Vitalik Buterin (02:09.800)

to an India COVID 19 relief fund,

Lex Fridman (02:13.380)

saying you don't want to be the locus of this much power.

Vitalik Buterin (02:17.760)

This is fascinating.

Lex Fridman (02:20.760)

Why and how were you able to walk away

Lex Fridman (02:23.620)

from this much money and this much power?

Lex Fridman (02:26.600)

So I should probably start by giving some of the backstory

Vitalik Buterin (02:31.040)

around these coins and this concept of giving me coins.

Lex Fridman (02:35.560)

So first of all, Shiba Inu, as you said,

Lex Fridman (02:38.440)

is this kind of knockoff of Dogecoin, right?

Lex Fridman (02:40.800)

And Dogecoin was this initial kind of fun coin

Vitalik Buterin (02:44.480)

that was created back, I think, around 2014 or so.

Lex Fridman (02:47.320)

And it was just created by Jackson Palmer

Vitalik Buterin (02:50.000)

who put it out as a joke for a couple of hours

Lex Fridman (02:52.240)

and a community formed around it.

Lex Fridman (02:53.960)

And at the beginning, people didn't take it very seriously.

Lex Fridman (02:57.680)

I actually remember putting about $25,000 into Doge

Vitalik Buterin (03:01.040)

sometime around 2016.

Lex Fridman (03:02.360)

And I just remember thinking to myself,

Vitalik Buterin (03:05.600)

okay, how am I going to explain to my mom

Lex Fridman (03:08.880)

that I just invested $25,000 into Dogecoins?

Lex Fridman (03:12.520)

And what even are Dogecoins?

Lex Fridman (03:14.200)

The only interesting thing about this coin

Vitalik Buterin (03:16.300)

is that there's a logo of a dog somewhere.

Lex Fridman (03:19.840)

But of course, that ended up being one of the best

Vitalik Buterin (03:21.960)

investments I've ever made and it did really well.

Lex Fridman (03:24.880)

And then at the end of 2020, Elon Musk, of course,

Vitalik Buterin (03:28.600)

started talking about Dogecoin and the market cap

Lex Fridman (03:31.920)

just shot up to about $50 billion.

Lex Fridman (03:35.600)

Actually, it shot up multiple times, right?

Lex Fridman (03:37.720)

Like the first time it went up from about 0.8 cents

Vitalik Buterin (03:40.920)

to about like 7 cents.

Lex Fridman (03:42.680)

And this just happened all in one day.

Lex Fridman (03:44.160)

And I remember this was when I was still in Singapore

Lex Fridman (03:48.440)

in the middle of COVID and I saw that the price

Vitalik Buterin (03:53.440)

just went up by 1000% and I was like,

Lex Fridman (03:56.080)

oh my God, my Doge is worth like a lot.

Lex Fridman (03:59.200)

And so I immediately called up some of my friends

Lex Fridman (04:02.800)

and told them to like drop everything and scramble.

Lex Fridman (04:05.440)

And I sold half the Doge and I got $4.3 million,

Lex Fridman (04:09.320)

donated the proceeds to give directly.

Lex Fridman (04:11.360)

And a few hours after I did this,

Lex Fridman (04:13.640)

the price dropped back down from about 7 cents to 4 cents.

Lex Fridman (04:16.480)

So I managed to sell the Doge at the top

Lex Fridman (04:18.120)

and I remember just that feeling

Vitalik Buterin (04:20.040)

like I was such an amazing trader.

Lex Fridman (04:22.240)

But then of course, the price went up from 4 cents

Vitalik Buterin (04:24.720)

then to 7 and then 50 and just like Doge becoming

Lex Fridman (04:28.560)

this big phenomenon where there's even a lot of people

Vitalik Buterin (04:32.200)

that have heard of Doge that have not heard of Ethereum

Lex Fridman (04:34.120)

is just like something even I wasn't predicting, right?

Lex Fridman (04:36.800)

And so after that, of course, we have Doge

Lex Fridman (04:38.960)

and then people are thinking, well,

Vitalik Buterin (04:41.120)

if the leading DOG token is worth $50 billion,

Lex Fridman (04:43.520)

then surely the second largest DOG token deserves

Lex Fridman (04:47.720)

at least seven or 8 billion, right?

Lex Fridman (04:49.680)

Like, I feel like that's the kind of what the mindset

Vitalik Buterin (04:52.000)

of these Shiba people is.

Lex Fridman (04:54.600)

So that of course, they did this other gimmick, right?

Vitalik Buterin (04:57.080)

Where they gave me half the Shiba token supply.

Lex Fridman (05:00.920)

They were actually not the first projects to do this.

Lex Fridman (05:03.480)

So around the end of 2020,

Lex Fridman (05:06.040)

there was this weird project called Teller.

Vitalik Buterin (05:08.720)

It's like T E L L O R.

Lex Fridman (05:10.400)

I think they're a chain link competitor

Vitalik Buterin (05:12.040)

or something like this.

Lex Fridman (05:13.280)

But I remember they just like dumped $50,000

Vitalik Buterin (05:16.920)

worth of their token into my wallet.

Lex Fridman (05:18.760)

And then they had their Twitter army

Vitalik Buterin (05:20.120)

just like basically run around saying,

Lex Fridman (05:22.040)

look, look at Vitalik's wallet, Vitalik holds Tellers.

Vitalik Buterin (05:24.520)

He's one of us, he's a supporter.

Lex Fridman (05:26.320)

And as soon as I discovered this,

Vitalik Buterin (05:27.800)

I just like publicly sold the Teller tokens on Uniswap.

Lex Fridman (05:31.520)

And this created a bit of a Twitter splat.

Vitalik Buterin (05:34.440)

Now, the Shiba people were more clever.

Lex Fridman (05:36.880)

The Shiba people, instead of dumping to that wallet,

Lex Fridman (05:39.240)

they dumped to my cold wallet, right?

Lex Fridman (05:41.480)

So in a cryptocurrency, right,

Vitalik Buterin (05:43.520)

there's this concept of like cold wallets and hot wallets.

Lex Fridman (05:45.720)

Basically, like the thing that actually owns your money

Lex Fridman (05:49.600)

is like this 80 digit number called a private key, right?

Lex Fridman (05:52.800)

And a hot wallet is when that private key

Vitalik Buterin (05:54.520)

is just stored in memory on your computer,

Lex Fridman (05:56.680)

on your phone, really easy to access.

Vitalik Buterin (05:58.840)

Cold wallet means it's either written down

Lex Fridman (06:01.800)

on a piece of paper or it's on a computer

Lex Fridman (06:04.840)

that's just never accessed the internet, right?

Lex Fridman (06:07.080)

So cold is very inconvenient,

Lex Fridman (06:08.440)

but cold is also much more secure, right?

Lex Fridman (06:10.640)

Because even if that computer has some viruses on it,

Vitalik Buterin (06:13.720)

like it's like air gapped,

Lex Fridman (06:15.920)

it's not actually going to be able to upload it.

Lex Fridman (06:17.800)

So this cold wallet and like all the money

Lex Fridman (06:21.280)

is out of the cold wallet,

Lex Fridman (06:22.320)

so it's safe for me to talk about my setup now, right?

Lex Fridman (06:24.480)

But it was a laptop that was sitting in Canada.

Lex Fridman (06:27.560)

And I also had two pieces of paper

Lex Fridman (06:30.920)

where I wrote down two numbers

Vitalik Buterin (06:32.560)

on those two pieces of paper.

Lex Fridman (06:33.880)

One was with me, one was in Canada.

Lex Fridman (06:35.720)

And if you add those two numbers together,

Lex Fridman (06:37.360)

you get the private key.

Lex Fridman (06:38.760)

So because of COVID travel restrictions,

Lex Fridman (06:41.320)

and this cold wallets in Canada,

Lex Fridman (06:44.240)

like it's very difficult for me to actually access it, right?

Lex Fridman (06:48.000)

And I'm not sure if they knew this,

Vitalik Buterin (06:49.960)

maybe they just got lucky,

Lex Fridman (06:51.120)

but basically they sent a lot of these dog tokens

Vitalik Buterin (06:55.840)

into this wallet where it was very difficult

Lex Fridman (06:59.440)

for me to access it.

Lex Fridman (07:00.400)

But then I saw these dog tokens,

Lex Fridman (07:02.400)

I saw more and more people talking about them.

Lex Fridman (07:04.120)

And then at some point I realized that like,

Lex Fridman (07:06.920)

hey, these things are worth billions of dollars.

Lex Fridman (07:09.240)

And like, no, there's lots of really good things

Lex Fridman (07:11.840)

that you could do with that amount of money.

Lex Fridman (07:13.080)

And it would actually be a waste to just like see it go.

Lex Fridman (07:16.120)

So I made the decision that like,

Vitalik Buterin (07:18.760)

I would actually power through

Lex Fridman (07:20.200)

and figure out how to like safely,

Vitalik Buterin (07:23.000)

like basically get my private key.

Lex Fridman (07:24.960)

I actually had to call up my family,

Vitalik Buterin (07:27.240)

tell them to read out their number

Lex Fridman (07:29.200)

off of their piece of paper.

Vitalik Buterin (07:30.640)

I entered that into a fresh laptop

Lex Fridman (07:34.360)

that I bought from Target.

Vitalik Buterin (07:35.360)

Then I put in my other number on my piece of paper,

Lex Fridman (07:38.840)

added the two numbers together on the computer,

Vitalik Buterin (07:40.600)

there's the key.

Lex Fridman (07:41.600)

And at the same time, like just scrambled for two days,

Vitalik Buterin (07:45.520)

setting up a new wallet

Lex Fridman (07:47.000)

where I could move my ETH to safely,

Vitalik Buterin (07:48.800)

like getting people to be multisig partners,

Lex Fridman (07:50.760)

just like doing all sorts of like stuff

Vitalik Buterin (07:53.920)

that 10 years ago you would expect

Lex Fridman (07:56.000)

to just be part of a cyberpunk science fiction novel,

Lex Fridman (07:58.640)

but now it's all real.

Lex Fridman (07:59.960)

So you're doing this all by yourself, essentially.

Vitalik Buterin (08:03.120)

Most of it by myself.

Lex Fridman (08:04.280)

So you have to keep it secret.

Vitalik Buterin (08:05.760)

Right, and I needed my family to actually like go

Lex Fridman (08:09.560)

and read the number on their piece of paper.

Lex Fridman (08:12.200)

And then in my new multisig wallet,

Lex Fridman (08:15.640)

like there's other people that are signatories,

Lex Fridman (08:19.120)

but I'm obviously not gonna reveal any details beyond that.

Lex Fridman (08:22.960)

So I did this, right?

Lex Fridman (08:24.760)

And I actually managed to like get the private key,

Lex Fridman (08:28.120)

make the first transaction that would just move all my ETH

Vitalik Buterin (08:30.800)

to the multisig wallet so it's safe.

Lex Fridman (08:32.680)

And then second transact,

Vitalik Buterin (08:34.800)

put the private key on my main computer,

Lex Fridman (08:36.400)

then started going in and just selling some

Vitalik Buterin (08:39.520)

of the dog tokens and then just like giving them

Lex Fridman (08:41.480)

to these different charities.

Vitalik Buterin (08:43.400)

Now, at the time I actually did not even like have any idea

Lex Fridman (08:49.200)

of how much you would be able to get, right?

Vitalik Buterin (08:50.600)

Because like on paper, the dog tokens are $7 billion,

Lex Fridman (08:53.840)

but like in reality, it's a very liquid market.

Vitalik Buterin (08:56.480)

Are you gonna crash it after you sell 1 million worth

Lex Fridman (09:00.200)

or are you gonna crash it after 10 million?

Lex Fridman (09:03.000)

Might you actually be able to get like an entire 200 million?

Lex Fridman (09:06.760)

I had no idea.

Lex Fridman (09:08.760)

So I definitely was just over the mindset,

Lex Fridman (09:12.840)

like, okay, I mean, I'll sell a bit,

Vitalik Buterin (09:14.560)

maybe I get some ETH and then donated some ETH

Lex Fridman (09:17.280)

to give well, donated some to other groups.

Lex Fridman (09:19.160)

And then, okay, have some dog tokens.

Lex Fridman (09:21.000)

Like I don't have an easy ability to sell more myself,

Lex Fridman (09:23.360)

but then I'll just like give them to these groups

Lex Fridman (09:25.720)

and like, hopefully they'll do good things with them.

Vitalik Buterin (09:29.000)

It was actually, I actually donated at 20%

Lex Fridman (09:32.040)

then dumped 80%.

Vitalik Buterin (09:33.880)

Yeah, so the COVID India group got one batch

Lex Fridman (09:38.440)

and then there's another group that got another batch.

Lex Fridman (09:40.920)

And I don't wanna say who they are

Lex Fridman (09:42.360)

cause I think that they wanna announce themselves

Vitalik Buterin (09:44.440)

at some point.

Lex Fridman (09:45.280)

Sure.

Vitalik Buterin (09:46.120)

Yeah, but you can see the fact

Lex Fridman (09:48.480)

that these transactions were made on the blockchain,

Lex Fridman (09:50.800)

but it was just very interesting and unexpected

Lex Fridman (09:57.160)

and just an insanely crazy situation.

Vitalik Buterin (10:00.760)

It's been a couple of weeks.

Lex Fridman (10:02.880)

First of all, thank you for helping me hang up some curtains.

Vitalik Buterin (10:06.000)

This is a first for the podcast

Lex Fridman (10:08.400)

and shows that you're a truly a special person

Vitalik Buterin (10:13.520)

to be willing to help.

Lex Fridman (10:14.760)

But now a couple of weeks later,

Lex Fridman (10:16.600)

do you regret any aspect of that decision?

Lex Fridman (10:20.480)

I'm sure there is some things

Vitalik Buterin (10:21.680)

that I probably could have done better.

Lex Fridman (10:23.600)

Like I was actually talking to some of these charities

Lex Fridman (10:27.720)

and I was impressed by just how much money they managed

Lex Fridman (10:30.960)

to get out of selling some of these coins.

Lex Fridman (10:32.840)

So I probably could have done better

Lex Fridman (10:35.760)

by just talking more with the traders

Lex Fridman (10:38.560)

and actually ensuring that they can do a better job

Lex Fridman (10:43.440)

of maximizing the value of all of them.

Lex Fridman (10:48.760)

But it was a very stressful time

Lex Fridman (10:52.320)

and I did have to act quickly.

Vitalik Buterin (10:53.680)

Like I did manage to make a lot of the donations

Lex Fridman (10:57.240)

before, a few days before the great crypto crash happened.

Lex Fridman (11:01.200)

So it was, it's difficult to,

Lex Fridman (11:06.400)

obviously there's parallel universes in which I did better,

Lex Fridman (11:08.860)

but at the same time,

Lex Fridman (11:10.160)

there's also lots of parallel universes

Vitalik Buterin (11:12.400)

where because I hesitated more

Lex Fridman (11:14.320)

and tried to spend more time thinking I missed

Vitalik Buterin (11:16.120)

the opportunity.

Lex Fridman (11:17.600)

So on that, it's like a luck of the draw

Lex Fridman (11:20.520)

and I'm just happy that everything was able to turn out

Lex Fridman (11:25.520)

as well as it did.

Lex Fridman (11:27.280)

But psychologically, you mentioned stress.

Lex Fridman (11:30.280)

How hard was it?

Lex Fridman (11:32.240)

It was stressful, right?

Lex Fridman (11:33.240)

I think, well, one of the really stressful parts

Vitalik Buterin (11:35.540)

was just the fact that I had to basically move

Lex Fridman (11:39.240)

all of my funds, including the 325,000 ether

Vitalik Buterin (11:42.760)

from one cold wallet into another hot wallet,

Lex Fridman (11:45.040)

or sorry, into another multi SIG wallet.

Lex Fridman (11:48.240)

And maybe the multi SIG wallet had a bug in it.

Lex Fridman (11:50.880)

Maybe there's like some mistake I'll make in the middle

Vitalik Buterin (11:53.800)

that causes the funds to get lost.

Lex Fridman (11:55.760)

You know, that part was stressful.

Lex Fridman (11:58.800)

And I was definitely stressing out for two days.

Lex Fridman (12:01.880)

I mean, triple checking the new wallet.

Vitalik Buterin (12:03.560)

I even did a bit of an audit of the code myself.

Lex Fridman (12:05.660)

I wrote my own JavaScript to DAP to make confirmations

Vitalik Buterin (12:10.040)

because Gnosis Safe didn't work with the status wallet well.

Lex Fridman (12:14.000)

So there was definitely,

Vitalik Buterin (12:16.520)

that whole thing was definitely a bit of a marathon.

Lex Fridman (12:19.600)

I was also a kind of definitely a bit worried

Vitalik Buterin (12:23.440)

about or uncertain, I guess, how the public

Lex Fridman (12:26.640)

and including the coin communities

Vitalik Buterin (12:28.920)

would perceive the whole thing.

Lex Fridman (12:31.960)

But I was actually impressed.

Vitalik Buterin (12:33.520)

Like I, for every poster that was saying like,

Lex Fridman (12:36.800)

no, you know, why did Vitalik like rug pull on us?

Vitalik Buterin (12:40.880)

He was, his wallet was supposed to be a burn address.

Lex Fridman (12:44.640)

You know, there's like 10 people that are like,

Vitalik Buterin (12:46.760)

oh, you know, I thought I was just in this

Lex Fridman (12:49.080)

because it's a fun pyramid gambling thing.

Lex Fridman (12:52.000)

But instead I ended up being part of this, you know,

Lex Fridman (12:54.680)

great public good thing for humanity.

Lex Fridman (12:56.320)

And that's like even more amazing.

Lex Fridman (12:58.360)

So the amounts of that that I got was very impressive.

Vitalik Buterin (13:03.640)

So, you know, all in all, you know,

Lex Fridman (13:05.120)

I think the dog people did great.

Vitalik Buterin (13:07.640)

The dog people.

Lex Fridman (13:08.520)

Is there something you can extend

Vitalik Buterin (13:10.600)

to the bigger picture of it

Lex Fridman (13:12.960)

in the principles you apply to making this decision?

Vitalik Buterin (13:15.640)

Is there some principles, philosophies

Lex Fridman (13:18.280)

that you apply also to the decisions you make

Lex Fridman (13:22.240)

around Ethereum?

Lex Fridman (13:24.800)

I think a big one for me is just this idea

Vitalik Buterin (13:28.520)

that crypto, you know, isn't just an opportunity

Lex Fridman (13:32.800)

to give people like slightly better ways

Vitalik Buterin (13:35.800)

to save value in all of these things.

Lex Fridman (13:37.880)

Like it's also an opportunity to like basically create

Vitalik Buterin (13:42.000)

these like new digital institutions

Lex Fridman (13:44.520)

that could serve the public good in new ways.

Lex Fridman (13:47.140)

And that's something that I've been interested in

Lex Fridman (13:50.880)

for a long time.

Vitalik Buterin (13:51.720)

I actually even have this article in Bitcoin Magazine

Lex Fridman (13:55.000)

back in 2014, where I basically suggested this idea

Vitalik Buterin (13:58.400)

that, you know, you would have coins that represent causes

Lex Fridman (14:00.920)

and like people would just like buy and accept those coins

Vitalik Buterin (14:03.760)

because they support those causes.

Lex Fridman (14:05.400)

So I think it's called markets, institutions, and currencies,

Vitalik Buterin (14:09.120)

a new form of social incentivization or something like that.

Lex Fridman (14:11.520)

And I'm sure you can find it and throw it in the links.

Lex Fridman (14:14.320)

So that was interesting to kind of see becoming real.

Lex Fridman (14:19.620)

And like in general, I think, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (14:21.940)

public goods are very important

Lex Fridman (14:23.420)

and on the internet, public goods are even more important.

Vitalik Buterin (14:26.460)

Like every single Lex Friedman podcast is just on YouTube

Lex Fridman (14:30.300)

and no anyone can go and see it.

Vitalik Buterin (14:31.980)

Like there's no way for you to like, you know, sell it

Lex Fridman (14:35.740)

and so that some people can see it,

Lex Fridman (14:37.740)

but then other people can't see it.

Lex Fridman (14:38.920)

Like, you know, you could do that,

Lex Fridman (14:40.000)

but then you'd obviously be reducing your impact.

Lex Fridman (14:42.860)

So thank you for making the amazing Lex Friedman podcast

Lex Fridman (14:47.100)

so freely available.

Lex Fridman (14:48.260)

Well, that's actually a tense thing is how do you do it

Lex Fridman (14:51.940)

in a way that's not controlled in a centralized fashion?

Lex Fridman (14:55.620)

Cause actually YouTube feels free and open,

Lex Fridman (14:59.140)

but it nevertheless is one company

Lex Fridman (15:00.700)

making centralized decisions.

Lex Fridman (15:01.980)

And the first time I realized YouTube is not forever

Lex Fridman (15:05.780)

is when a lot of the Joe Rogan experience library

Vitalik Buterin (15:10.020)

was pulled from YouTube as part of the Spotify deal.

Lex Fridman (15:13.460)

And it made me realize we need to,

Vitalik Buterin (15:17.080)

it's like the realization that fiat money is centralized

Lex Fridman (15:20.860)

is realizing that, you know, this is not forever

Lex Fridman (15:25.740)

and you might want to come up with schemes to distribute it,

Lex Fridman (15:28.740)

to decentralize the control of it

Vitalik Buterin (15:31.480)

in a way that audio for podcasts is just an RSS feed.

Lex Fridman (15:34.620)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (15:35.460)

And I think one of the kind of philosophical things

Lex Fridman (15:38.080)

that I hope to achieve is kind of decouple

Vitalik Buterin (15:40.860)

the concept of public goods,

Lex Fridman (15:42.720)

which are incredibly important

Lex Fridman (15:44.460)

and are the lifeblood of modern civilization

Lex Fridman (15:46.820)

from the idea that there is or can be

Vitalik Buterin (15:50.980)

one central organization that represents the public

Lex Fridman (15:53.780)

and like perfectly understands and can impose their idea

Lex Fridman (15:57.540)

of what is the good, right?

Lex Fridman (15:58.960)

Like it's, when people talk about public goods,

Vitalik Buterin (16:02.340)

it just often comes with this baggage of, you know,

Lex Fridman (16:05.260)

either centralization or conformism.

Lex Fridman (16:07.380)

And I think like it doesn't have to, right?

Lex Fridman (16:09.460)

Like often the most important public goods

Vitalik Buterin (16:12.260)

are the ones that are created by, you know,

Lex Fridman (16:14.380)

the crazy individualists that disagree with everyone else.

Lex Fridman (16:17.560)

So trying to make this kind of synthesis

Lex Fridman (16:21.260)

where you combine the values of decentralization

Lex Fridman (16:24.740)

and the values of open source,

Lex Fridman (16:26.420)

but you're not naive about it.

Lex Fridman (16:29.100)

And like, you know, you realize that

Lex Fridman (16:31.700)

for these things to be produced,

Vitalik Buterin (16:33.700)

there needs to be a way for it to be sustainable.

Lex Fridman (16:36.060)

There needs to be some way of supporting people

Vitalik Buterin (16:38.340)

who are working these projects.

Lex Fridman (16:39.900)

But at the same time,

Vitalik Buterin (16:40.940)

you want to avoid that turning into

Lex Fridman (16:44.300)

a vector of centralization,

Vitalik Buterin (16:45.780)

like trying to sort of get all of the good things

Lex Fridman (16:49.980)

without the bad things.

Vitalik Buterin (16:50.940)

To me, that's a big part of sort of

Lex Fridman (16:55.480)

what my grand experiment in crypto is about.

Lex Fridman (16:58.100)

And like, we are doing things

Lex Fridman (17:00.060)

in different kinds of things for this, right?

Vitalik Buterin (17:02.540)

Like there's the Gitcoin Grants quadratic funding

Lex Fridman (17:05.620)

in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Vitalik Buterin (17:07.500)

There's obviously these dog coins

Lex Fridman (17:10.380)

that just happens, I guess, accidentally.

Vitalik Buterin (17:14.040)

There's other projects that, like for example,

Lex Fridman (17:17.740)

you know, Uniswap has their Uniswap DAO

Vitalik Buterin (17:21.020)

that just has a huge amount of funding.

Lex Fridman (17:22.620)

And like, we haven't seen yet how that's going to be deployed,

Vitalik Buterin (17:25.620)

but, you know, it could be potentially deployed

Lex Fridman (17:28.540)

to do lots of really good and amazing things.

Lex Fridman (17:31.640)

Do you see Ethereum as essentially a mechanism

Lex Fridman (17:36.020)

to fight for social causes?

Vitalik Buterin (17:41.160)

I definitely see Ethereum as being a mechanism

Lex Fridman (17:46.700)

to fight for definitely some specific things

Vitalik Buterin (17:52.180)

that are social causes.

Lex Fridman (17:54.900)

Like just, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (17:57.100)

the fact of creating an open financial system

Lex Fridman (17:59.600)

that anyone can participate in

Vitalik Buterin (18:00.920)

no matter where they are in the world,

Lex Fridman (18:02.280)

that's a social cause.

Vitalik Buterin (18:03.660)

Just, you know, giving people the ability

Lex Fridman (18:05.760)

to organize and create projects,

Vitalik Buterin (18:08.180)

even if it's five people in five different countries.

Lex Fridman (18:10.580)

I think that kind of inclusiveness,

Vitalik Buterin (18:12.260)

I think that's a social cause

Lex Fridman (18:14.140)

and it's a core crypto value.

Lex Fridman (18:18.820)

But then at the same time, like the other important

Lex Fridman (18:21.860)

and if part of the magic of Ethereum

Vitalik Buterin (18:23.740)

that you have to balance that against

Lex Fridman (18:25.100)

is that it is also this open platform

Vitalik Buterin (18:27.820)

where ultimately, you know,

Lex Fridman (18:29.220)

the things that are on Ethereum

Vitalik Buterin (18:31.900)

is just the things that the community makes of it.

Lex Fridman (18:35.540)

Well, you kind of briefly opened the door,

Lex Fridman (18:37.660)

so let's go there.

Lex Fridman (18:39.580)

When it comes to government regulation of crypto,

Lex Fridman (18:44.780)

what's the best case scenario?

Lex Fridman (18:46.140)

What's the worst case scenario?

Vitalik Buterin (18:48.460)

In terms of, you know, as you've kind of mentioned,

Lex Fridman (18:52.580)

Ethereum challenges the power centers of the world

Lex Fridman (18:57.020)

and how do you see the interplay between governments

Lex Fridman (19:01.980)

and this new technology that resists centralized power?

Vitalik Buterin (19:06.220)

Best case and worst case.

Lex Fridman (19:08.080)

The best case is that, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (19:14.460)

blockchains continue to prosper

Lex Fridman (19:17.020)

and we figure out scalability

Lex Fridman (19:18.700)

so that people can actually start doing things on block,

Lex Fridman (19:22.380)

like, you know, all of the amazing use cases

Vitalik Buterin (19:24.660)

that people have been talking about

Lex Fridman (19:25.820)

instead of today where a lot of the great stuff

Vitalik Buterin (19:28.420)

gets priced out because, you know,

Lex Fridman (19:29.860)

transaction fees are at five to $10

Lex Fridman (19:32.140)

and then we see a lot of different amazing applications

Lex Fridman (19:36.420)

happening on blockchains.

Vitalik Buterin (19:37.500)

You know, it could be like DAO is creating new ways

Lex Fridman (19:41.820)

for people to interact and organize with each other

Lex Fridman (19:44.900)

and new ways for artists to get funded

Lex Fridman (19:46.580)

and just all sorts of these amazing things

Lex Fridman (19:50.120)

and there's just enough public support

Lex Fridman (19:55.900)

and just enough people that see that, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (19:57.820)

look, crypto is clearly doing a lot of good things

Lex Fridman (1:00:01.880)

but at the same time, when people are in that mental state,

Vitalik Buterin (1:00:07.520)

like it's very easy for you to just kind of like latch on.

Lex Fridman (1:00:10.320)

And if you find someone who expresses anger

Vitalik Buterin (1:00:13.720)

at the same things that you're angry at,

Lex Fridman (1:00:15.760)

and also like it seems like someone who's strong

Lex Fridman (1:00:19.720)

and seems like someone who might be good to rally around,

Lex Fridman (1:00:22.880)

it's very easy to just like get behind that.

Lex Fridman (1:00:24.920)

But that extra part about it where he's

Lex Fridman (1:00:26.720)

Satoshi Nakamura, I don't understand why that's necessary.

Vitalik Buterin (1:00:29.480)

I think that's, he could have done it without that,

Lex Fridman (1:00:33.200)

but that just, it's a marketing strategy.

Vitalik Buterin (1:00:36.720)

Like it sort of gives him more salience.

Lex Fridman (1:00:38.440)

Like there's other big block personalities, right?

Lex Fridman (1:00:40.800)

Well, what's the difference with Craig Wright?

Lex Fridman (1:00:43.000)

He's not just a big block personality,

Vitalik Buterin (1:00:45.800)

he's potentially Satoshi.

Lex Fridman (1:00:48.640)

And he did say all the big block things, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:00:52.000)

Like he talked about how,

Lex Fridman (1:00:53.560)

oh, the concept of a fee market is fundamentally

Vitalik Buterin (1:00:56.040)

like economically wrong and it should be a free market

Lex Fridman (1:01:00.160)

and you should be able to have blocks as big as you want.

Lex Fridman (1:01:02.000)

So like he repeated all the talking points.

Lex Fridman (1:01:03.560)

And so a lot of people were kind of sucked into that, right?

Lex Fridman (1:01:07.560)

And so he unfortunately was able to basically dominate

Lex Fridman (1:01:12.280)

a big part of the Bitcoin cash community for a long time.

Lex Fridman (1:01:15.240)

And then eventually, of course,

Lex Fridman (1:01:18.520)

more and more people started to catch on.

Vitalik Buterin (1:01:20.960)

He would just say technical things

Lex Fridman (1:01:22.600)

that are completely wrong, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:01:24.080)

Like one example of this that I remember

Lex Fridman (1:01:27.720)

is that he mixed up the concept of 256 bits

Lex Fridman (1:01:32.880)

and two to the power of 256 bits, right?

Lex Fridman (1:01:36.360)

So the difference is, it's like the difference

Lex Fridman (1:01:38.640)

between 80 and the concept of 80 digit numbers, right?

Lex Fridman (1:01:42.640)

And because of this, like he made this arguments

Vitalik Buterin (1:01:46.720)

that said that Bitcoin's elliptic curve

Lex Fridman (1:01:50.520)

is friendly to cryptographic pairings.

Vitalik Buterin (1:01:52.480)

Like you don't have to understand what that is,

Lex Fridman (1:01:54.440)

but if you want to know,

Vitalik Buterin (1:01:55.560)

I have articles on both at Vitalik.ca.

Lex Fridman (1:01:58.280)

But basically he made this like technical argument

Vitalik Buterin (1:02:01.400)

that really hedged on this point.

Lex Fridman (1:02:03.280)

And then when people pressed him on,

Lex Fridman (1:02:04.800)

it was like, yes, but no, no, like what?

Lex Fridman (1:02:06.960)

Look, exactly, the height is like what?

Vitalik Buterin (1:02:09.520)

Two to the 256 bits.

Lex Fridman (1:02:11.160)

That's a very tiny amount of information.

Vitalik Buterin (1:02:14.560)

No, no, no, no, two to the 256 bits

Lex Fridman (1:02:17.000)

is more than the amount of information in the universe.

Lex Fridman (1:02:19.440)

And like he equivocated and kind of like preyed

Lex Fridman (1:02:22.680)

on people's inability to understand

Vitalik Buterin (1:02:25.480)

that mathematical nuance.

Lex Fridman (1:02:26.640)

And I called him out.

Lex Fridman (1:02:27.840)

And eventually I even called him out in person

Lex Fridman (1:02:30.240)

at this conference in Seoul.

Vitalik Buterin (1:02:31.800)

Like I just stood up and asked,

Lex Fridman (1:02:34.600)

hey, conference organizer,

Lex Fridman (1:02:36.800)

why are you letting this fraud speak at this conference?

Lex Fridman (1:02:39.480)

And I remember even some big blockers at the time

Vitalik Buterin (1:02:42.920)

getting angry at me.

Lex Fridman (1:02:44.440)

But eventually they did get rid of him.

Lex Fridman (1:02:47.720)

And then Craig, well, basically Craig Wright

Lex Fridman (1:02:50.760)

was forced to split off

Vitalik Buterin (1:02:52.800)

because the rest of the community refused

Lex Fridman (1:02:54.680)

to accept some network change that he wanted.

Lex Fridman (1:02:56.800)

And so then there was the BCH and BSP.

Lex Fridman (1:02:59.040)

And then in the Bitcoin Cash community,

Vitalik Buterin (1:03:00.960)

there was this drama of,

Lex Fridman (1:03:02.640)

are they going to add a developer fund

Vitalik Buterin (1:03:04.880)

where they redirect 12 and a half percent of the revenue

Lex Fridman (1:03:07.080)

from the miners to the devs?

Lex Fridman (1:03:08.640)

And according to the libertarian not aggression principle,

Lex Fridman (1:03:11.320)

is this technically theft?

Vitalik Buterin (1:03:12.720)

Like his understanding of the technical depths

Lex Fridman (1:03:18.200)

of cryptocurrency was lacking in a way

Vitalik Buterin (1:03:20.600)

that Satoshi Nakamoto certainly would not.

Lex Fridman (1:03:23.200)

Yes, exactly.

Lex Fridman (1:03:24.080)

But the point is that even after Craig Wright got expunged,

Lex Fridman (1:03:27.560)

the Bitcoin Cash community kept having these disagreements.

Lex Fridman (1:03:30.440)

And now after this development funds dispute,

Lex Fridman (1:03:34.000)

there was a further split between Bitcoin Cash and ABC.

Lex Fridman (1:03:37.800)

So the branch continues to extend.

Lex Fridman (1:03:41.560)

So in that way, it's disappointing

Vitalik Buterin (1:03:43.800)

to see those kinds of splitting that was never resolved.

Lex Fridman (1:03:46.240)

It is.

Vitalik Buterin (1:03:47.080)

I would have definitely like wanted to see more

Lex Fridman (1:03:49.800)

of a kind of like the principled coin

Vitalik Buterin (1:03:54.000)

with like tries to be Bitcoin,

Lex Fridman (1:03:56.560)

but follows consistent big block values.

Lex Fridman (1:03:59.800)

But I know maybe I should just like stop expecting projects

Lex Fridman (1:04:03.600)

that I have no involvement in to care at all

Vitalik Buterin (1:04:06.160)

about what my values are.

Lex Fridman (1:04:07.160)

And like maybe Ethereum just like is.

Vitalik Buterin (1:04:09.360)

I think you have a powerful voice

Lex Fridman (1:04:13.320)

and you can inspire other projects

Vitalik Buterin (1:04:14.760)

to live up to their best possible selves.

Lex Fridman (1:04:19.000)

Okay, so that's the layer one approach.

Vitalik Buterin (1:04:25.640)

The other layer one within Ethereum

Lex Fridman (1:04:28.080)

is the idea of sharding.

Vitalik Buterin (1:04:29.320)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:04:30.160)

What the heck is sharding?

Vitalik Buterin (1:04:31.920)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:04:32.760)

What does the future of sharding look like?

Vitalik Buterin (1:04:33.600)

Right, so to summarize that big long tangent

Lex Fridman (1:04:36.320)

that we just went into.

Vitalik Buterin (1:04:37.160)

It's a beautiful tangent by the way.

Lex Fridman (1:04:38.960)

It's the basic tangent.

Lex Fridman (1:04:40.040)

And I think like crypto is just one

Lex Fridman (1:04:42.800)

of the most underrated aspects of crypto

Vitalik Buterin (1:04:44.720)

is I think how you can like analyze the sociology

Lex Fridman (1:04:48.240)

and the politics and the anthropology.

Lex Fridman (1:04:49.960)

And I'm sure Dan Carlin would have fun exploring

Lex Fridman (1:04:53.000)

the space at some point.

Lex Fridman (1:04:54.080)

But like the core trade off, right?

Lex Fridman (1:04:56.160)

Is that if you scale blockchains the dumb way

Vitalik Buterin (1:04:58.200)

just by increasing the parameters,

Lex Fridman (1:04:59.960)

then eventually you just make it harder and harder

Vitalik Buterin (1:05:01.840)

to participate as a node and you end up with a system

Lex Fridman (1:05:04.960)

where there's like 20 computers running the whole thing.

Lex Fridman (1:05:07.880)

And it's just very centralized.

Lex Fridman (1:05:09.600)

So sharding basically says, well,

Vitalik Buterin (1:05:11.760)

instead of just increasing the parameters,

Lex Fridman (1:05:13.680)

what we're going to do is we're going to change

Vitalik Buterin (1:05:15.600)

the blockchain architecture in such a way

Lex Fridman (1:05:19.080)

that each individual node in the blockchain

Vitalik Buterin (1:05:22.720)

only needs to store a small portion of the data

Lex Fridman (1:05:25.640)

and only needs to process a small portion

Vitalik Buterin (1:05:27.280)

of the transactions.

Lex Fridman (1:05:28.840)

So you can think about it as being like inspired

Lex Fridman (1:05:30.680)

by BitTorrent, right?

Lex Fridman (1:05:31.520)

Like on BitTorrent, there's no such thing

Lex Fridman (1:05:33.320)

as a BitTorrent full node that has every movie, right?

Lex Fridman (1:05:35.960)

You know, the work is like split up among a huge number

Vitalik Buterin (1:05:38.480)

of computers and like that makes sense.

Lex Fridman (1:05:40.600)

That's, you know, the only sane way

Vitalik Buterin (1:05:42.440)

to scale a system like that.

Lex Fridman (1:05:45.240)

And if they actually tried making a version of BitTorrent

Vitalik Buterin (1:05:47.960)

that required full nodes that store every movie,

Lex Fridman (1:05:50.360)

then, you know, it would have like zero censorship

Vitalik Buterin (1:05:52.760)

resistance and it would just like, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:05:54.720)

be dead in an instant.

Lex Fridman (1:05:56.280)

So the challenge with taking that model

Lex Fridman (1:05:59.320)

and applying it to blockchains, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:06:01.040)

Is that blockchains aren't just about like spreading data

Lex Fridman (1:06:04.040)

around, they're about agreeing on exactly what data

Vitalik Buterin (1:06:07.840)

was spread around and ensuring that everything

Lex Fridman (1:06:10.440)

that you agree on actually is correct.

Lex Fridman (1:06:12.480)

And so you have this paradox where let's say

Lex Fridman (1:06:14.920)

you want to have a system that supports 10,000 transactions

Vitalik Buterin (1:06:18.600)

a second, but each computer in the network

Lex Fridman (1:06:20.760)

can only personally verify a hundred transactions a second.

Lex Fridman (1:06:25.000)

So how can each computer get a guarantee

Lex Fridman (1:06:28.800)

about the other 9,900 without actually going

Lex Fridman (1:06:31.760)

and verifying them themselves?

Lex Fridman (1:06:33.080)

And it turns out that there are some,

Lex Fridman (1:06:37.360)

like a bundle of different tricks that can do that, right?

Lex Fridman (1:06:40.320)

So like one of them is just random sampling.

Lex Fridman (1:06:43.720)

So the idea behind random sampling is like,

Lex Fridman (1:06:46.120)

let's say for simplicity, this is a proof of stake chain

Lex Fridman (1:06:49.520)

and you have 10,000 validators, validators are like,

Lex Fridman (1:06:53.320)

you know, the stakers and like for simplicity,

Lex Fridman (1:06:56.040)

we'll assume they all have the same number of coins, right?

Lex Fridman (1:06:57.920)

If someone has more coins, we'll just kind of split them up

Lex Fridman (1:06:59.880)

and pretend they're 10 stakers.

Lex Fridman (1:07:01.640)

Then you do like some random shuffling

Lex Fridman (1:07:05.720)

and you basically say, these random hundred validators

Lex Fridman (1:07:08.320)

are assigned to validate this block.

Vitalik Buterin (1:07:10.640)

These random hundred validators

Lex Fridman (1:07:11.920)

are assigned to validate this block.

Vitalik Buterin (1:07:13.120)

These random hundred validators

Lex Fridman (1:07:14.280)

are assigned to validate this block.

Lex Fridman (1:07:16.080)

And so each individual computer only gets assigned

Lex Fridman (1:07:19.640)

to validate like a small piece,

Lex Fridman (1:07:21.400)

but then the way that the information

Lex Fridman (1:07:23.520)

about like what's valid gets passed around, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:07:25.560)

Is that when these hundred participants validate a block,

Lex Fridman (1:07:30.400)

they all sign a message basically saying like,

Vitalik Buterin (1:07:33.080)

yes, we agree that this block is valid.

Lex Fridman (1:07:35.200)

And then like they combine that signature into one

Lex Fridman (1:07:37.680)

and then they broadcast that signature.

Lex Fridman (1:07:39.480)

And then everyone else,

Vitalik Buterin (1:07:40.760)

instead of verifying the blocks directly,

Lex Fridman (1:07:42.400)

just verifies that signature, right?

Lex Fridman (1:07:44.280)

And so if I see the signature,

Lex Fridman (1:07:46.240)

I'm not directly convinced that that block is valid,

Lex Fridman (1:07:49.080)

but what I am convinced of is that out of this committee

Lex Fridman (1:07:52.520)

of this randomly selected group of a hundred validators,

Vitalik Buterin (1:07:56.000)

let's say at least 70 of them agree

Lex Fridman (1:07:58.320)

that this block is valid.

Lex Fridman (1:07:59.520)

And so if I trust that the majority

Lex Fridman (1:08:02.120)

of these participants are all honest,

Vitalik Buterin (1:08:04.200)

then because it's all randomly selected,

Lex Fridman (1:08:06.400)

the attacker can't just like force themselves

Vitalik Buterin (1:08:08.200)

into one committee.

Lex Fridman (1:08:09.280)

And so the attacker is gonna be evenly spread out too.

Lex Fridman (1:08:13.800)

And so if the entire set of validators is mostly honest,

Lex Fridman (1:08:17.760)

every committee is gonna be mostly honest.

Lex Fridman (1:08:19.400)

And so like bad blocks are not gonna go through, right?

Lex Fridman (1:08:22.480)

So that's like one simple form of sharding.

Vitalik Buterin (1:08:24.760)

There was also other more clever things that you can do.

Lex Fridman (1:08:26.920)

So for example, there's this concept of a ZK snarks, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:08:29.960)

I'll call it as your knowledge proofs.

Lex Fridman (1:08:31.600)

So this is the idea that you can make a cryptographic proof

Vitalik Buterin (1:08:34.440)

that says, I verified or I ran some complex computation

Lex Fridman (1:08:40.880)

on this piece of data and I got this answer.

Lex Fridman (1:08:43.320)

And so if you make these kinds of proofs,

Lex Fridman (1:08:45.680)

then like if you see a ZK snark

Vitalik Buterin (1:08:47.640)

that says some block is valid,

Lex Fridman (1:08:49.120)

then you're convinced that that block is valid.

Lex Fridman (1:08:51.920)

And even if everyone in that committee is evil,

Lex Fridman (1:08:55.320)

like they have no way of making a valid proof

Lex Fridman (1:08:58.280)

for a bad block, right?

Lex Fridman (1:08:59.680)

Like, because the proof itself,

Vitalik Buterin (1:09:00.840)

like it is a proof that you did the computation

Lex Fridman (1:09:03.560)

where that proof is much easier to verify

Vitalik Buterin (1:09:05.920)

than just running the computation yourself.

Lex Fridman (1:09:08.800)

And there's once again, super awesome mathematical

Vitalik Buterin (1:09:14.440)

or cryptographic magic behind making ZK snarks work.

Lex Fridman (1:09:17.880)

But it gives you a little bit of a leg up

Vitalik Buterin (1:09:20.120)

over the 51% honest assumption.

Lex Fridman (1:09:23.280)

So it's a little hack that improves upon the random

Vitalik Buterin (1:09:25.520)

sampling thing.

Lex Fridman (1:09:26.440)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (1:09:27.280)

And like, there's other hacks, right?

Lex Fridman (1:09:28.320)

Like there is another hack called data availability

Vitalik Buterin (1:09:30.760)

sampling that allows you to make sure that the data

Lex Fridman (1:09:32.800)

in the blocks was actually published.

Lex Fridman (1:09:35.080)

But like, basically, like if you stack a couple

Lex Fridman (1:09:37.960)

of these tricks on top of each other,

Vitalik Buterin (1:09:39.520)

you can create a system where like I,

Lex Fridman (1:09:41.560)

as an individual participant can be convinced

Vitalik Buterin (1:09:44.160)

that everything that's going on in this distributed

Lex Fridman (1:09:46.640)

blockchain thing is correct without actually personally

Vitalik Buterin (1:09:49.360)

checking more than like a percent of it.

Lex Fridman (1:09:51.000)

So that's sharding.

Vitalik Buterin (1:09:52.040)

That's sharding.

Lex Fridman (1:09:52.880)

But the, as I understand, maybe correct me on this,

Vitalik Buterin (1:09:58.120)

is in the space of Ethereum, the sharding happens

Lex Fridman (1:10:03.200)

on some fixed number.

Vitalik Buterin (1:10:05.360)

Like the split is on some fixed number.

Lex Fridman (1:10:07.920)

I think it's 64 is the currently sort of proposed number.

Lex Fridman (1:10:11.440)

So how does that help scaling?

Lex Fridman (1:10:15.760)

Is it just the fixed constant scaling by 64?

Lex Fridman (1:10:19.080)

And is that a way to achieve those crazy,

Lex Fridman (1:10:21.800)

the crazy amount of scaling that seems to be required

Lex Fridman (1:10:25.200)

to use cryptocurrency for purchasing?

Lex Fridman (1:10:28.320)

So doing like competing with credit cards

Lex Fridman (1:10:30.520)

and Visa and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:10:31.880)

So first, I think like the 64 can be hard forked up

Vitalik Buterin (1:10:34.640)

over time.

Lex Fridman (1:10:35.800)

So we've set it so that like there's theoretically space

Vitalik Buterin (1:10:39.920)

in the data structure for 1024 shards,

Lex Fridman (1:10:42.200)

it's just that 64 of them are turned on.

Vitalik Buterin (1:10:45.320)

There are challenges with having more shards

Lex Fridman (1:10:47.280)

because like you have to have logic that just like checks

Lex Fridman (1:10:49.560)

and manages all of those shards.

Lex Fridman (1:10:51.280)

And if there's too many of them,

Vitalik Buterin (1:10:52.560)

then that becomes too expensive.

Lex Fridman (1:10:54.720)

But even still, you can improve quite a bit.

Lex Fridman (1:10:57.600)

And then the other thing that we're doing is

Lex Fridman (1:11:00.440)

if what we're getting maximum scalability

Vitalik Buterin (1:11:03.000)

by combining rollups and sharding.

Lex Fridman (1:11:05.760)

So this might be a good time to talk about rollups.

Lex Fridman (1:11:07.800)

What are rollups?

Lex Fridman (1:11:09.320)

Now we're moving into layer two ideas.

Vitalik Buterin (1:11:11.680)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:11:12.520)

So the idea behind a rollup is basically that,

Lex Fridman (1:11:17.520)

so instead of just publishing transactions

Lex Fridman (1:11:23.000)

directly on chain and having everyone do all of the checking

Vitalik Buterin (1:11:27.520)

of those transactions,

Lex Fridman (1:11:28.960)

what you do is you create a system

Vitalik Buterin (1:11:31.080)

where users send their transactions to some central party

Lex Fridman (1:11:36.640)

called an aggregator.

Lex Fridman (1:11:37.960)

And like, well, theoretically, you can have a system

Lex Fridman (1:11:40.120)

where like the aggregator switches around

Vitalik Buterin (1:11:41.600)

or where anyone can be an aggregator.

Lex Fridman (1:11:43.160)

So it's still like permissionless to send things.

Vitalik Buterin (1:11:46.440)

Then what the aggregator does is they strip out

Lex Fridman (1:11:51.160)

all of the transaction data that like is not relevant

Vitalik Buterin (1:11:55.120)

to helping people update the state.

Lex Fridman (1:11:57.760)

So when I say the state,

Vitalik Buterin (1:11:58.680)

this is a very important kind of technical term

Lex Fridman (1:12:01.040)

for blockchains.

Vitalik Buterin (1:12:01.880)

I mean, like account balances, code,

Lex Fridman (1:12:06.280)

like things that are like memory,

Vitalik Buterin (1:12:08.680)

internal memory of smart contracts,

Lex Fridman (1:12:10.400)

like basically everything the blockchain

Lex Fridman (1:12:12.040)

actually has to keep track of and remember, right?

Lex Fridman (1:12:14.560)

So you just put in,

Vitalik Buterin (1:12:19.000)

you take all these transactions,

Lex Fridman (1:12:20.240)

strip out all the data that's not relevant

Vitalik Buterin (1:12:22.840)

to telling people how to update the state.

Lex Fridman (1:12:24.920)

And then you take the data that's needed

Vitalik Buterin (1:12:26.720)

to update the state,

Lex Fridman (1:12:27.560)

and then you like really compress it, right?

Lex Fridman (1:12:29.000)

So like, for example, if we say,

Lex Fridman (1:12:31.920)

I, Vitalik, have an account that's 0xAB58,

Vitalik Buterin (1:12:35.640)

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it's 20 bytes.

Lex Fridman (1:12:37.720)

Well, instead we can say,

Vitalik Buterin (1:12:38.840)

well, I have an account that is number 1874224 in the tree.

Lex Fridman (1:12:44.800)

And that goes down from 20 bytes

Vitalik Buterin (1:12:46.360)

to just like an index and a position,

Lex Fridman (1:12:48.080)

which is three bytes, right?

Lex Fridman (1:12:49.120)

So you use all sorts of these fancy compression tricks,

Lex Fridman (1:12:51.480)

and you basically just,

Vitalik Buterin (1:12:53.160)

instead of publishing all these transactions,

Lex Fridman (1:12:55.600)

you publish this like tiny compressed blob, right?

Lex Fridman (1:12:58.480)

So the amount of data that goes on chain

Lex Fridman (1:13:00.280)

goes down by maybe about a factor of 10, right?

Lex Fridman (1:13:02.720)

And then the second thing is that

Lex Fridman (1:13:04.160)

you don't do the computation on chain,

Vitalik Buterin (1:13:06.200)

instead you do the computation off chain,

Lex Fridman (1:13:08.520)

and there's one of two ways to do this, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:13:11.200)

One is called a ZK rollup,

Lex Fridman (1:13:12.520)

which is you just provide a ZK SNARK that basically says,

Vitalik Buterin (1:13:15.800)

hey, look, I did this computation,

Lex Fridman (1:13:17.840)

and I have this proof that here's, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (1:13:21.240)

some hash of the result and it's correct.

Lex Fridman (1:13:23.400)

And then you stick it on chain,

Lex Fridman (1:13:24.800)

and everyone verifies this one proof

Lex Fridman (1:13:26.720)

instead of verifying all these transactions.

Lex Fridman (1:13:29.120)

And then the other approach is called an optimistic rollup,

Lex Fridman (1:13:31.600)

which is basically made of the scheme where,

Vitalik Buterin (1:13:33.960)

like, first someone says like,

Lex Fridman (1:13:36.480)

hey, this is what I think the result of applying

Vitalik Buterin (1:13:39.520)

these transactions is.

Lex Fridman (1:13:40.800)

And then someone else can say,

Vitalik Buterin (1:13:41.880)

I disagree, the result is different.

Lex Fridman (1:13:43.680)

And only if two people disagree,

Lex Fridman (1:13:45.720)

do you actually just like publish all of the data

Lex Fridman (1:13:50.040)

and run that whole block on chain.

Lex Fridman (1:13:52.440)

So if there's disagreements,

Lex Fridman (1:13:53.640)

then you just like run everything on chain

Lex Fridman (1:13:55.960)

and whoever was wrong, like loses a lot of money, right?

Lex Fridman (1:13:58.720)

So like disagreements are very rare

Lex Fridman (1:14:00.360)

and they're very expensive.

Lex Fridman (1:14:01.640)

And then a ZK rollup,

Vitalik Buterin (1:14:02.760)

you don't even rely on this like challenging game at all,

Lex Fridman (1:14:05.160)

you just rely on a proof.

Lex Fridman (1:14:06.840)

So the core principle is basically that

Lex Fridman (1:14:09.760)

instead of lots of transactions

Lex Fridman (1:14:11.920)

and everyone verifies every transaction,

Lex Fridman (1:14:14.680)

it is you take the transactions,

Vitalik Buterin (1:14:16.720)

you strip them down and compress them as much as possible,

Lex Fridman (1:14:20.360)

then stick that on the blockchain.

Vitalik Buterin (1:14:22.440)

You do need to stick something on the blockchain

Lex Fridman (1:14:24.520)

just so that everyone else can like keep up to date

Vitalik Buterin (1:14:27.520)

with the state so they know what all the contracts are,

Lex Fridman (1:14:30.080)

what all the balances are and all of this,

Lex Fridman (1:14:31.400)

but it's a very small amount of data.

Lex Fridman (1:14:33.440)

And then you use one of these other off chain games,

Vitalik Buterin (1:14:36.560)

could be this optimistic game, could be a ZK snark

Lex Fridman (1:14:39.840)

to just prove that somebody out there did the computation

Lex Fridman (1:14:43.080)

and the result is correct, right?

Lex Fridman (1:14:44.600)

So you're pushing like 90% of the work off chain

Lex Fridman (1:14:47.640)

and then, well, 90% of the data

Lex Fridman (1:14:50.160)

and 99% of the computation off chain,

Lex Fridman (1:14:52.720)

and then you still have 10% of the data

Lex Fridman (1:14:54.360)

and 1% of the computation on chain.

Lex Fridman (1:14:56.280)

And so your scalability goes up by a factor of about 100.

Lex Fridman (1:14:59.960)

So these systems are already alive

Lex Fridman (1:15:02.440)

for some applications, right?

Lex Fridman (1:15:05.480)

So there's something called loopering,

Lex Fridman (1:15:07.320)

which is just a ZK roll up for payments, right?

Lex Fridman (1:15:10.160)

So you can have assets inside of the loopering system

Lex Fridman (1:15:15.320)

and you can go around and transfer them,

Lex Fridman (1:15:21.360)

and you get like much lower transaction fees, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:15:24.560)

Like instead of $5, you'd have to pay like less than 5 cents.

Lex Fridman (1:15:28.400)

But the only problem is that this only supports

Vitalik Buterin (1:15:31.560)

a couple of applications right now,

Lex Fridman (1:15:33.000)

like making one that supports anything

Vitalik Buterin (1:15:35.560)

that you can do on Ethereum just takes a bit more work,

Lex Fridman (1:15:37.760)

but that's being done as well, right?

Lex Fridman (1:15:40.040)

So like within a few months, I'm expecting fully Ethereum

Lex Fridman (1:15:44.480)

capable roll ups to be available as well.

Lex Fridman (1:15:48.760)

So roll ups, just summarizing,

Lex Fridman (1:15:51.800)

do most of the work off chain,

Vitalik Buterin (1:15:53.120)

put only a little bit on chain, factor of 100 scaling,

Lex Fridman (1:15:55.920)

sharding, another factor of 100 scaling,

Vitalik Buterin (1:15:57.960)

100 times 100 factor of 10,000,

Lex Fridman (1:16:00.520)

hundreds of thousands of transactions a second,

Lex Fridman (1:16:02.360)

and like, you know, there's your scalability.

Lex Fridman (1:16:04.200)

Okay, so you achieve scalability,

Vitalik Buterin (1:16:05.680)

you can do a large number of transactions very quickly

Lex Fridman (1:16:08.120)

and the cost of doing those transactions are much lower.

Vitalik Buterin (1:16:11.480)

You wrote that in the long term ZK roll ups

Lex Fridman (1:16:15.800)

are going to win in terms of layer two technology.

Vitalik Buterin (1:16:18.680)

Specifically you wrote, in general,

Lex Fridman (1:16:20.960)

my own view is that in the short term,

Vitalik Buterin (1:16:23.800)

optimistic roll ups, as you were saying,

Lex Fridman (1:16:25.800)

are likely to win out of general purpose EVM computation

Lex Fridman (1:16:28.880)

and ZK roll ups are likely to win out for simple payments,

Lex Fridman (1:16:35.000)

exchange and other application specific use cases,

Vitalik Buterin (1:16:37.720)

just as you were saying.

Lex Fridman (1:16:39.240)

But in the medium to long term,

Vitalik Buterin (1:16:40.880)

ZK roll ups will win out in all use cases

Lex Fridman (1:16:45.040)

as ZK SNARK technology improves.

Lex Fridman (1:16:49.000)

Why do you think ZK roll ups are going to win

Lex Fridman (1:16:53.080)

the big picture battle over layer two technologies?

Lex Fridman (1:16:55.960)

So I think ZK roll ups, like once you accept

Lex Fridman (1:16:59.400)

that the technology works are just like conceptually simpler

Lex Fridman (1:17:03.120)

and they have nicer properties.

Lex Fridman (1:17:04.640)

The reason is that they do not have this concept

Lex Fridman (1:17:07.200)

of a challenge game, right?

Lex Fridman (1:17:08.040)

Like, as I mentioned in an optimistic roll up,

Vitalik Buterin (1:17:10.480)

the way that you ensure that the results are correct

Lex Fridman (1:17:13.680)

is that you let one person submit

Lex Fridman (1:17:15.200)

and like they just submit with no proof.

Lex Fridman (1:17:16.760)

They just say, here's what I think the result is.

Lex Fridman (1:17:18.960)

And then if someone else disagrees,

Lex Fridman (1:17:20.880)

they make their own submission.

Lex Fridman (1:17:22.200)

And then if you have two disagreeing submissions,

Lex Fridman (1:17:23.920)

then you actually publish it on Chase.

Lex Fridman (1:17:25.720)

And then you see who's right.

Lex Fridman (1:17:27.520)

But for this to work, like you need to actually wait

Lex Fridman (1:17:30.760)

for someone to disagree, right?

Lex Fridman (1:17:32.240)

So like, for example, if I have an asset inside

Vitalik Buterin (1:17:34.400)

of an optimistic roll up and I wants to withdraw it,

Lex Fridman (1:17:37.000)

then I actually have to wait a week to withdraw it.

Vitalik Buterin (1:17:38.960)

Because like, if the block that contains my withdrawal

Lex Fridman (1:17:43.360)

turned out to be invalid,

Vitalik Buterin (1:17:44.600)

then there needs to be space for someone

Lex Fridman (1:17:46.000)

to disagree with it, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:17:47.520)

Whereas with a ZK roll up,

Lex Fridman (1:17:48.720)

like you don't need time for disagreeing

Lex Fridman (1:17:50.200)

because you just have a proof, right?

Lex Fridman (1:17:51.320)

As soon as a block is submitted,

Vitalik Buterin (1:17:52.920)

there's a proof and you know it's correct.

Lex Fridman (1:17:55.880)

So if disagreements, especially in the longterm are sparse,

Vitalik Buterin (1:17:59.320)

then you don't want to do the optimistic,

Lex Fridman (1:18:03.360)

the game theoretic thing, you wanna do the ZK stock.

Vitalik Buterin (1:18:05.960)

Right, the ZK stuff is just,

Lex Fridman (1:18:08.120)

like you can win a ZK roll up,

Vitalik Buterin (1:18:09.800)

you can withdraw immediately.

Lex Fridman (1:18:11.640)

You don't have to like worry about the economics

Lex Fridman (1:18:14.480)

of proving as much, right?

Lex Fridman (1:18:15.960)

There's just like fewer issues.

Vitalik Buterin (1:18:18.360)

The reason why ZK roll ups are not winning everywhere today

Lex Fridman (1:18:21.720)

is because ZK stocks are still a crazy new technology,

Vitalik Buterin (1:18:24.800)

right, like this is something that 10 years ago,

Lex Fridman (1:18:27.880)

it existed only in theory and there was none in practice.

Vitalik Buterin (1:18:31.240)

Then, eight years ago,

Lex Fridman (1:18:32.920)

people were just getting excited about it

Vitalik Buterin (1:18:34.520)

in Bitcoin conferences for the first time.

Lex Fridman (1:18:37.040)

Like four years, starting four years ago

Vitalik Buterin (1:18:40.760)

or three and a half years ago even,

Lex Fridman (1:18:42.360)

that was the first time you were able to make

Vitalik Buterin (1:18:43.960)

any ZK stock based anything on Ethereum.

Lex Fridman (1:18:46.760)

And then people started making them

Lex Fridman (1:18:48.560)

and ZK technology has only really become efficient enough

Lex Fridman (1:18:52.080)

to do a lot of things within the past

Vitalik Buterin (1:18:53.760)

maybe one and a half years.

Lex Fridman (1:18:55.800)

So it's new technology, it's crazy technology,

Vitalik Buterin (1:19:00.280)

it's admittedly scary technology.

Lex Fridman (1:19:02.840)

If you wanna learn more,

Vitalik Buterin (1:19:03.840)

I also have an article about this on Vitality.ca.

Lex Fridman (1:19:06.320)

It's actually really, really good.

Vitalik Buterin (1:19:07.880)

You're, most of your writing, it goes,

Lex Fridman (1:19:12.200)

it's technical but it's accessible.

Vitalik Buterin (1:19:14.000)

I highly, highly recommend to check out Vitality's articles

Lex Fridman (1:19:17.360)

and blogs, whatever you call them on the website.

Vitalik Buterin (1:19:20.360)

It's brilliant summary of the work.

Lex Fridman (1:19:22.600)

Actually, Ethereum documentation period is really good.

Vitalik Buterin (1:19:25.640)

I think that's somewhat crowdsourced.

Lex Fridman (1:19:28.000)

That documentation is really, really accessible

Lex Fridman (1:19:30.440)

and brilliant.

Lex Fridman (1:19:32.560)

But let me ask about sort of other approaches

Vitalik Buterin (1:19:36.240)

to layer two, like side chains.

Lex Fridman (1:19:39.440)

So the one popular one is Polygon.

Lex Fridman (1:19:42.400)

What are your thoughts about Polygon,

Lex Fridman (1:19:43.920)

which is a layer two network?

Lex Fridman (1:19:48.000)

Is it positive?

Lex Fridman (1:19:49.720)

Is it negative for Ethereum?

Lex Fridman (1:19:51.200)

Is it both?

Lex Fridman (1:19:52.040)

Does it have a future?

Vitalik Buterin (1:19:53.280)

Which is its own chain, but it's using Ethereum.

Lex Fridman (1:19:58.160)

It's like based on Ethereum essentially.

Vitalik Buterin (1:20:00.920)

Or maybe you can describe what it is.

Lex Fridman (1:20:02.840)

So I think there's a really big and important difference

Vitalik Buterin (1:20:06.240)

in security models between rollups and side chains,

Lex Fridman (1:20:09.000)

which is basically that rollups inherit

Lex Fridman (1:20:11.600)

from the security of Ethereum, right?

Lex Fridman (1:20:13.160)

So if I have coins inside of Loopring or Optimism

Vitalik Buterin (1:20:17.120)

or Arbitrum or ZK Sync,

Lex Fridman (1:20:19.920)

then even if everyone else in the world

Vitalik Buterin (1:20:22.880)

who is participating in these ecosystems

Lex Fridman (1:20:25.000)

hates me and wants to steal my money,

Vitalik Buterin (1:20:27.520)

I can still personally make sure

Lex Fridman (1:20:30.040)

that no matter what happens, I get my money out.

Vitalik Buterin (1:20:33.560)

It might be a bit expensive for me to get my money out

Lex Fridman (1:20:35.440)

and I have to do transactions on the main chain,

Lex Fridman (1:20:37.800)

but I'll be able to do it.

Lex Fridman (1:20:39.480)

Whereas in Polygon, which is a side chain,

Lex Fridman (1:20:42.320)

and so instead of being secured by Ethereum,

Lex Fridman (1:20:45.080)

it's also in part secured by its own

Vitalik Buterin (1:20:48.040)

proof of stake consensus with its own token.

Lex Fridman (1:20:50.280)

So if 70% of the whole,

Vitalik Buterin (1:20:53.520)

or even 51% of the holders of Polygon tokens

Lex Fridman (1:20:56.560)

wanted to take my money in Polygon, they can, right?

Lex Fridman (1:20:59.400)

So that's the, and like, to be fair,

Lex Fridman (1:21:03.440)

like there aren't even, like the supply,

Lex Fridman (1:21:06.440)

I don't think is even that widely distributed, right?

Lex Fridman (1:21:08.640)

So like potentially you could,

Vitalik Buterin (1:21:11.800)

this idea of 51% of the token holders

Lex Fridman (1:21:14.640)

coming together and stealing everything,

Lex Fridman (1:21:16.080)

like it's not impossible, right?

Lex Fridman (1:21:19.400)

Where does the scaling of Polygon come from?

Vitalik Buterin (1:21:21.600)

Like why is it able to process much more transactions

Lex Fridman (1:21:26.280)

than the Ethereum main chain?

Lex Fridman (1:21:28.200)

What's the idea there?

Lex Fridman (1:21:29.560)

I think in part, like I imagine,

Vitalik Buterin (1:21:32.440)

I'm not sure exactly what its capacity level is,

Lex Fridman (1:21:34.520)

but like I imagine it has a higher capacity

Vitalik Buterin (1:21:36.720)

because it's a bit more willing

Lex Fridman (1:21:38.680)

to take centralization trade offs.

Lex Fridman (1:21:40.600)

And then another thing is that like,

Lex Fridman (1:21:43.000)

if the Ethereum ecosystem,

Lex Fridman (1:21:44.880)

like even if it did not do that, right?

Lex Fridman (1:21:46.520)

If you think about an Ethereum ecosystem

Vitalik Buterin (1:21:48.080)

hypothetically scaling with side chains,

Lex Fridman (1:21:49.920)

then you would have a hundred copies of Polygon

Lex Fridman (1:21:52.480)

and they would each have their own tokens,

Lex Fridman (1:21:54.280)

they would each have their own chains.

Lex Fridman (1:21:55.520)

And so even if each one of those chains

Lex Fridman (1:21:57.600)

was only as scalable as Ethereum,

Vitalik Buterin (1:22:00.040)

you could still, like the total sum of them

Lex Fridman (1:22:02.920)

would still be a hundred times more than Ethereum.

Vitalik Buterin (1:22:05.120)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:22:07.640)

The thing that I want to say in Polygon's favor

Vitalik Buterin (1:22:09.640)

just to be very fair to them,

Lex Fridman (1:22:11.480)

like I really, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (1:22:14.000)

I definitely really, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:22:15.400)

respect the work that they're doing.

Vitalik Buterin (1:22:16.920)

So, you know, start with a bit with that word

Lex Fridman (1:22:20.560)

of not criticism caution, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:22:23.560)

Like it's that they made this kind of deliberate trade off

Lex Fridman (1:22:28.880)

for very pragmatic reasons,

Vitalik Buterin (1:22:30.440)

which is that the Ethereum ecosystem needs to scale now.

Lex Fridman (1:22:33.160)

And there are applications that want to do something now.

Vitalik Buterin (1:22:35.880)

And, you know, if there aren't Ethereum friendly options

Lex Fridman (1:22:38.960)

for them, then like, they're not going to just wait

Vitalik Buterin (1:22:40.960)

peacefully and do nothing for 12 months.

Lex Fridman (1:22:42.640)

And they're going to go to, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (1:22:44.520)

either Binance Smart Chain or, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:22:47.480)

one of some other system or potentially something

Vitalik Buterin (1:22:51.000)

that just has totally no alignment

Lex Fridman (1:22:52.920)

with Ethereum values whatsoever.

Lex Fridman (1:22:55.200)

But whereas, you know, with Polygon,

Lex Fridman (1:22:58.080)

like the best thing that you can say in Polygon's favor

Lex Fridman (1:23:00.800)

and against optimism is that, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:23:02.720)

optimism is not live and Polygon is live, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:23:05.440)

Like it just takes more work to create a system

Lex Fridman (1:23:08.440)

that has these extra rollups, security features.

Lex Fridman (1:23:12.320)

And so Polygon just said, we're going to be the system

Lex Fridman (1:23:14.920)

that makes the pragmatic trade off.

Vitalik Buterin (1:23:16.320)

We're going to go, you know, functionality first,

Lex Fridman (1:23:19.520)

and then, you know, we can talk about adding back

Vitalik Buterin (1:23:21.800)

the security later.

Lex Fridman (1:23:22.960)

So I've talked to them and like, in principle,

Vitalik Buterin (1:23:25.080)

I think they're very, you know, open to the idea

Lex Fridman (1:23:28.840)

of like adding more security and like becoming more,

Vitalik Buterin (1:23:33.400)

becoming a rollup or at least, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:23:36.040)

adding a Polygon chain that's a rollup

Vitalik Buterin (1:23:38.480)

at some point in the future,

Lex Fridman (1:23:39.880)

which is definitely something I think they, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (1:23:41.960)

absolutely should follow through on.

Lex Fridman (1:23:44.080)

But like the fact that like they exist now,

Lex Fridman (1:23:47.720)

and so, you know, applications can kind of bootstrap now

Lex Fridman (1:23:51.040)

on a chain that, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (1:23:52.200)

even though its security isn't perfect,

Lex Fridman (1:23:53.680)

at least it exists and people can go use it.

Lex Fridman (1:23:55.480)

And then over time, you know, the chain matures

Lex Fridman (1:23:58.760)

as the applications mature.

Vitalik Buterin (1:24:00.000)

Like, you know, it's, I think a very reasonable strategy

Lex Fridman (1:24:03.360)

and I'm definitely really happy

Vitalik Buterin (1:24:04.840)

that they're part of the ecosystem.

Lex Fridman (1:24:08.000)

Yeah, it's kind of interesting.

Vitalik Buterin (1:24:09.760)

The history of cryptocurrency has this tension

Lex Fridman (1:24:14.000)

of really good ideas that are hard to implement.

Lex Fridman (1:24:17.160)

So they take longer to implement

Lex Fridman (1:24:19.480)

and ideas that are not as good, but are faster to implement.

Vitalik Buterin (1:24:23.560)

This is like the story of like, you have like JavaScript

Lex Fridman (1:24:26.600)

that basically took over the world

Vitalik Buterin (1:24:28.400)

because it was quick to implement within 10 days.

Lex Fridman (1:24:31.600)

And then like later kept fixing itself.

Vitalik Buterin (1:24:35.120)

I don't know what to make of that.

Lex Fridman (1:24:37.960)

Sort of from an engineering perspective,

Vitalik Buterin (1:24:40.280)

I'm more and more becoming comfortable

Lex Fridman (1:24:42.440)

and accepting the fact that our whole world

Vitalik Buterin (1:24:44.400)

will run a technology that's not as good

Lex Fridman (1:24:47.160)

as it could have been.

Vitalik Buterin (1:24:48.800)

Just because the crappy solution is faster to implement

Lex Fridman (1:24:52.080)

and it sticks.

Lex Fridman (1:24:53.200)

What do you make of that tension?

Lex Fridman (1:24:55.240)

I think the compromise that we've been taking

Vitalik Buterin (1:24:57.880)

within Ethereum is like when we have to take

Lex Fridman (1:25:00.680)

the crappy solution, we look for crappy solutions

Vitalik Buterin (1:25:03.600)

that are forward compatible with becoming good over time.

Lex Fridman (1:25:07.560)

When you build the quick and dirty thing,

Vitalik Buterin (1:25:10.240)

you would still already have ideas in your head

Lex Fridman (1:25:13.120)

about what the more complete thing

Vitalik Buterin (1:25:15.640)

with all the security features added on would look like.

Lex Fridman (1:25:18.200)

Even if it requires a hard fork?

Vitalik Buterin (1:25:20.560)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:25:23.160)

For example, with sharding, I think it's likely

Vitalik Buterin (1:25:26.520)

that the first version of sharding that comes out

Lex Fridman (1:25:29.000)

is not going to have zkstarks and data availability sampling,

Vitalik Buterin (1:25:31.960)

for example.

Lex Fridman (1:25:32.800)

But we know what these technologies are.

Vitalik Buterin (1:25:34.920)

We feel like we have wrapped our heads around them.

Lex Fridman (1:25:37.800)

And so we know how to build a system

Vitalik Buterin (1:25:40.800)

where we can put all the pieces in place

Lex Fridman (1:25:42.640)

so that it becomes very easy to bolt those components

Vitalik Buterin (1:25:45.000)

on in the future.

Lex Fridman (1:25:46.640)

So if you do things that way, then at the beginning,

Vitalik Buterin (1:25:50.200)

you can have your system that has the functionality,

Lex Fridman (1:25:53.000)

but say has less security or less sustainability

Vitalik Buterin (1:25:56.600)

or less of something else.

Lex Fridman (1:25:58.240)

But then over time, it's designed in such a way

Vitalik Buterin (1:26:02.360)

that it has this easy on ramp to adding those things.

Lex Fridman (1:26:05.560)

And if you don't think explicitly

Vitalik Buterin (1:26:07.080)

about being future compatible,

Lex Fridman (1:26:08.680)

then you do often end up with a quick and dirty solution

Vitalik Buterin (1:26:12.600)

that backs you into a corner.

Lex Fridman (1:26:14.120)

And then there are definitely cases

Vitalik Buterin (1:26:16.000)

where I think the Ethereum ecosystem has suffered from that.

Lex Fridman (1:26:18.360)

And we have had to expand pretty significant effort

Vitalik Buterin (1:26:22.920)

on, for example, removing features that we didn't realize

Lex Fridman (1:26:26.880)

that we actually can't sustain.

Vitalik Buterin (1:26:29.760)

Like one big example is just increasing the gas costs.

Lex Fridman (1:26:32.920)

So like making some operations more expensive

Vitalik Buterin (1:26:36.560)

because they should be expensive

Lex Fridman (1:26:37.760)

because they actually take a lot of time in the process.

Lex Fridman (1:26:40.480)

So that's making something more expensive,

Lex Fridman (1:26:44.120)

kind of like taking some functionality away.

Lex Fridman (1:26:46.760)

So if you can like be cognizant

Lex Fridman (1:26:49.840)

of where you're likely going into the future,

Lex Fridman (1:26:52.200)

and if you don't know, like even be cognizant

Lex Fridman (1:26:54.000)

of both the most likely paths that you'll take in the future

Lex Fridman (1:26:56.800)

and coming, like thinking about your roadmap

Lex Fridman (1:26:59.280)

and coming up with a roadmap where you know

Vitalik Buterin (1:27:01.520)

that like if you wants to do either of those things,

Lex Fridman (1:27:04.440)

then you have a clean path toward it.

Vitalik Buterin (1:27:06.600)

That's probably the best kind of practical way

Lex Fridman (1:27:09.000)

to get the best of both worlds that we have.

Vitalik Buterin (1:27:12.000)

Okay, let's talk about this wonderful process of merging.

Lex Fridman (1:27:19.120)

Okay, so there's the main net,

Vitalik Buterin (1:27:22.280)

which is the Ethereum 1.0 chain,

Lex Fridman (1:27:25.200)

or the, what should we say,

Vitalik Buterin (1:27:27.400)

the chain that uses proof of work

Lex Fridman (1:27:29.140)

as a consensus mechanism.

Lex Fridman (1:27:30.800)

And then there's, what is it called?

Lex Fridman (1:27:33.520)

The beacon chain that uses the proof of stake mechanism.

Lex Fridman (1:27:40.720)

And I believe the beacon has been deployed successfully,

Lex Fridman (1:27:45.240)

is working, so that was in December of 2020.

Vitalik Buterin (1:27:49.160)

There's a bunch of questions around that

Lex Fridman (1:27:50.440)

that's fascinating as well,

Lex Fridman (1:27:51.560)

but I think the most fascinating question

Lex Fridman (1:27:54.340)

is about merging those two.

Vitalik Buterin (1:27:58.600)

When do the two chains, one that's proof of work,

Lex Fridman (1:28:03.400)

one that's proof of stake, merge?

Lex Fridman (1:28:06.360)

And what are the most difficult parts of this process?

Lex Fridman (1:28:10.280)

Right, so as you've said, right,

Vitalik Buterin (1:28:12.040)

the way that we have set up this proof of stake transition

Lex Fridman (1:28:15.680)

is that at first, the proof of stake chain

Lex Fridman (1:28:18.280)

just launches on its own, right?

Lex Fridman (1:28:19.600)

And this is the thing that happened in December.

Lex Fridman (1:28:22.180)

And the proof of stake chain has been running

Lex Fridman (1:28:25.080)

for close to six months now.

Vitalik Buterin (1:28:28.600)

I mean, by the time people watch this,

Lex Fridman (1:28:30.360)

it might actually be six months.

Lex Fridman (1:28:33.080)

But it isn't actually coming to consensus

Lex Fridman (1:28:35.440)

on anything except for itself, right?

Lex Fridman (1:28:37.480)

So the idea behind that is to just

Lex Fridman (1:28:40.040)

give the proof of stake chain time to mature,

Vitalik Buterin (1:28:43.360)

time for people to build the ecosystem around it,

Lex Fridman (1:28:45.480)

time to make sure that there aren't any bugs,

Lex Fridman (1:28:48.160)

and just like prove to the community

Lex Fridman (1:28:49.640)

that no proof of stake actually is real,

Lex Fridman (1:28:51.520)

and a full transition is realistic,

Lex Fridman (1:28:55.560)

because the thing that you're transitioning to

Vitalik Buterin (1:28:57.560)

already exists and already works.

Lex Fridman (1:28:59.480)

And then at some point in the future,

Vitalik Buterin (1:29:01.200)

you have this event called the merge,

Lex Fridman (1:29:03.040)

where you basically take the activity

Vitalik Buterin (1:29:05.960)

that's being done inside of the proof of work chain,

Lex Fridman (1:29:08.040)

and you actually move it over into the proof of stake chain,

Lex Fridman (1:29:10.360)

so you get rid of the proof of work side completely.

Lex Fridman (1:29:13.460)

So the way that the merge will work is,

Vitalik Buterin (1:29:18.460)

it's definitely gone through a few different iterations.

Lex Fridman (1:29:22.000)

Like the earlier versions of this

Vitalik Buterin (1:29:24.880)

actually required more work for users

Lex Fridman (1:29:26.800)

and more work for clients.

Vitalik Buterin (1:29:27.840)

It was much more like,

Lex Fridman (1:29:29.180)

oh, there's this new chain, there's this old chain,

Lex Fridman (1:29:31.160)

and then everyone has to migrate

Lex Fridman (1:29:33.600)

from the old chain to the new chain,

Lex Fridman (1:29:34.920)

and then at some point we'll forget about the old chain.

Lex Fridman (1:29:37.400)

The new version is designed

Lex Fridman (1:29:39.000)

to be much more seamless for users, right?

Lex Fridman (1:29:43.480)

So basically what actually happens is that

Vitalik Buterin (1:29:45.960)

the old chain basically becomes embedded

Lex Fridman (1:29:49.320)

inside the new chain, right?

Lex Fridman (1:29:50.960)

So starting from the merge transition block,

Lex Fridman (1:29:54.640)

every proof of stake chain block

Vitalik Buterin (1:29:56.800)

is going to contain a block of the,

Lex Fridman (1:29:59.680)

what we consider now to be,

Lex Fridman (1:30:01.480)

what we consider to be the Ethereum chain today,

Lex Fridman (1:30:03.660)

but we'll call it the execution chain.

Lex Fridman (1:30:05.600)

And then at the same time, to create one of these blocks,

Lex Fridman (1:30:08.520)

you're not going to need proof of work anymore, right?

Lex Fridman (1:30:10.880)

So basically at the same time,

Lex Fridman (1:30:12.360)

you would both get rid of the proof of work requirements

Vitalik Buterin (1:30:15.000)

for one of these blocks to be valid,

Lex Fridman (1:30:16.560)

but instead you require these blocks

Lex Fridman (1:30:18.840)

to be embedded inside of the proof of stake blocks, right?

Lex Fridman (1:30:21.560)

So you basically have like a chain inside a chain.

Lex Fridman (1:30:24.000)

And this is, from an architecture perspective,

Lex Fridman (1:30:28.200)

you might think it's a little bit suboptimal,

Lex Fridman (1:30:30.080)

but it actually has some nice properties

Lex Fridman (1:30:32.240)

and makes it easier to kind of think about the consensus

Lex Fridman (1:30:35.140)

and think about what we call the execution layer,

Lex Fridman (1:30:38.080)

like transactions and contracts kind of separately

Lex Fridman (1:30:40.680)

and upgrade them separately.

Lex Fridman (1:30:42.120)

And it also just means that the upgrade process

Lex Fridman (1:30:46.500)

is extremely seamless, right?

Lex Fridman (1:30:47.740)

Because from the point of view of a client

Vitalik Buterin (1:30:49.780)

that's following the chain,

Lex Fridman (1:30:50.880)

you basically have to update nothing, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:30:53.400)

You're still following the same chain

Lex Fridman (1:30:55.680)

and follows the same rules,

Vitalik Buterin (1:30:56.960)

except instead of checking proof of work,

Lex Fridman (1:30:58.780)

you'll switch to checking that these blocks

Vitalik Buterin (1:31:01.020)

are embedded inside of blocks of the proof of stake chain.

Lex Fridman (1:31:03.300)

So there'll be this merge block

Vitalik Buterin (1:31:06.000)

that will mark this transition.

Lex Fridman (1:31:08.080)

And over time, I guess the new chain

Vitalik Buterin (1:31:11.140)

will contain the full record

Lex Fridman (1:31:13.480)

of all the transactions that's ever happened

Vitalik Buterin (1:31:15.320)

on the previous chain, on the old chain.

Lex Fridman (1:31:17.600)

So maybe I'm asking a dumb question here,

Lex Fridman (1:31:20.840)

but in this process, is the new chain going to have

Lex Fridman (1:31:25.560)

all the information of the past transactions?

Vitalik Buterin (1:31:29.040)

The new chain is not going to hold information

Lex Fridman (1:31:33.340)

from what happened in the Ethereum chain before the merge,

Vitalik Buterin (1:31:36.720)

right, so Ethereum clients that people are going to use

Lex Fridman (1:31:43.520)

around the time of the merge and soon after the merge,

Vitalik Buterin (1:31:45.880)

they're probably just going to sync

Lex Fridman (1:31:48.060)

and check the proof of work chain up to the merge,

Lex Fridman (1:31:50.560)

and then they're gonna check the proof of stake chain.

Lex Fridman (1:31:52.400)

But at some point in the future,

Vitalik Buterin (1:31:53.520)

I think people will just stop bothering

Lex Fridman (1:31:55.080)

checking the proof of work before the merge.

Vitalik Buterin (1:31:57.220)

Got it, so that old history information is not important

Lex Fridman (1:32:01.360)

for the future, like if you're operating actively

Vitalik Buterin (1:32:03.880)

on the new chain, that history is not important to you.

Lex Fridman (1:32:08.840)

It's not important, so it's not strictly important

Vitalik Buterin (1:32:12.360)

for just like any smart contract

Lex Fridman (1:32:17.800)

or just like applications that run on the blockchain.

Vitalik Buterin (1:32:19.920)

It can be important to users,

Lex Fridman (1:32:21.640)

and it can be important for some applications,

Lex Fridman (1:32:24.160)

but we're basically saying that like maintaining

Lex Fridman (1:32:27.080)

and serving that is not going to be a simultaneous

Vitalik Buterin (1:32:29.960)

with the responsibility of every Ethereum node.

Lex Fridman (1:32:32.240)

If you want that information, there can be separate

Vitalik Buterin (1:32:34.640)

protocols for backing it up.

Lex Fridman (1:32:36.340)

And like these other protocols actually exist, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:32:38.440)

Like there's something called the graph,

Lex Fridman (1:32:40.180)

which is doing some history retrieval.

Vitalik Buterin (1:32:42.120)

Potentially, you can just take that entire chain

Lex Fridman (1:32:43.960)

and stake it on BitTorrent.

Vitalik Buterin (1:32:45.160)

Like there's lots of ways to like archive it

Lex Fridman (1:32:48.600)

and create kind of customized search protocols for it.

Lex Fridman (1:32:51.200)

So what's your sense why, so there's a Python 2

Lex Fridman (1:32:54.520)

and Python 3, and it took forever for people to switch.

Vitalik Buterin (1:32:58.840)

What's your sense why this merge has been taking longer

Lex Fridman (1:33:02.880)

than perhaps was expected?

Vitalik Buterin (1:33:05.360)

I think the biggest reason is just we've been

Lex Fridman (1:33:08.760)

underestimating the technical complexity.

Vitalik Buterin (1:33:11.000)

There's a lot of technical complexity

Lex Fridman (1:33:12.480)

in making a successful proof of stake chain.

Vitalik Buterin (1:33:14.520)

There's a lot of technical complexity

Lex Fridman (1:33:17.120)

in actually figuring out the transition process.

Vitalik Buterin (1:33:20.740)

There's...

Lex Fridman (1:33:22.320)

So that's bigger than social complexity.

Lex Fridman (1:33:24.800)

So the technical complexity you would say

Lex Fridman (1:33:27.240)

is the bigger reason for any delays

Lex Fridman (1:33:29.760)

than the social complexity?

Lex Fridman (1:33:31.160)

I actually think so.

Vitalik Buterin (1:33:32.400)

I think we've been very fortunate

Lex Fridman (1:33:35.080)

to not have too much social complexity around the merge.

Lex Fridman (1:33:37.720)

So not much drama.

Lex Fridman (1:33:38.960)

No.

Vitalik Buterin (1:33:40.320)

I think the biggest part of the reason

Lex Fridman (1:33:42.560)

is just because we have been talking

Vitalik Buterin (1:33:44.760)

about proof of stake and sharding

Lex Fridman (1:33:46.040)

as being part of the roadmap

Lex Fridman (1:33:47.200)

since almost the very beginning of the project, right?

Lex Fridman (1:33:49.960)

Like the very first proof of stake blog post

Vitalik Buterin (1:33:52.400)

is from January 2014, which was two months

Lex Fridman (1:33:56.360)

after the project started

Lex Fridman (1:33:57.760)

and maybe even a day after the announcement.

Lex Fridman (1:34:01.680)

So proof of stake was not something

Vitalik Buterin (1:34:06.000)

that we kind of put on anybody by surprise.

Lex Fridman (1:34:09.040)

And then when the Dow fork happened

Lex Fridman (1:34:11.160)

and the people on the ETC side split off,

Lex Fridman (1:34:13.840)

I think it also just happens that a lot of the people

Vitalik Buterin (1:34:16.680)

that were not willing to stomach the Dow fork

Lex Fridman (1:34:18.840)

and then join the ETC side,

Vitalik Buterin (1:34:20.400)

they were the more Bitcoiny types.

Lex Fridman (1:34:23.120)

And the more Bitcoiny types do also tend to like proof

Vitalik Buterin (1:34:26.000)

of work more.

Lex Fridman (1:34:26.840)

And so like that also sort of ended up,

Vitalik Buterin (1:34:29.160)

sort of like purifying the communities on both sides,

Lex Fridman (1:34:32.600)

I guess.

Lex Fridman (1:34:33.440)

So Ethereum Classic is not switching to proof of stake

Lex Fridman (1:34:35.760)

and they're happy with their setup.

Lex Fridman (1:34:38.600)

And by the time that it came

Lex Fridman (1:34:43.680)

to the beacon chain launching into now,

Vitalik Buterin (1:34:45.880)

I think the community is very strongly in favor

Lex Fridman (1:34:48.360)

of the proof of stake switch.

Lex Fridman (1:34:50.920)

But let me ask the question that no engineer wants to hear,

Lex Fridman (1:34:55.760)

which is the question of timeline.

Lex Fridman (1:35:00.000)

When do you think the merge will happen?

Lex Fridman (1:35:03.480)

Do you have a sense it might happen this year?

Lex Fridman (1:35:06.240)

Do you have a sense it might be pushed

Lex Fridman (1:35:07.760)

towards next year, 2022 or even beyond?

Vitalik Buterin (1:35:14.600)

I think early 2022 is the most realistic.

Lex Fridman (1:35:20.720)

There's definitely still like an optimistic case

Vitalik Buterin (1:35:22.840)

of it happening this year,

Lex Fridman (1:35:23.800)

but the realistic thing to count on is definitely

Vitalik Buterin (1:35:27.600)

the very early part of next year.

Lex Fridman (1:35:31.400)

Is there specific things that stand out to you

Vitalik Buterin (1:35:33.400)

that will make you feel good about progress

Lex Fridman (1:35:37.920)

if you see it happening?

Lex Fridman (1:35:40.480)

So the thing that we had last month

Lex Fridman (1:35:43.760)

is we had this online hackathon called Rayanism,

Vitalik Buterin (1:35:46.800)

where basically a bunch of the different client developers

Lex Fridman (1:35:50.600)

that are going to be part of the transition,

Vitalik Buterin (1:35:52.520)

like hacks together some test nets

Lex Fridman (1:35:54.880)

of the post merge Ethereum chain.

Lex Fridman (1:35:57.520)

So these were only test nets

Lex Fridman (1:35:59.440)

of what would happen after the merge.

Vitalik Buterin (1:36:01.080)

They were not test nets of the transition itself.

Lex Fridman (1:36:03.320)

So the thing that people are working on now actually

Vitalik Buterin (1:36:06.640)

is the transition.

Lex Fridman (1:36:08.240)

So having a full specification

Vitalik Buterin (1:36:12.320)

of both the transition and post transition,

Lex Fridman (1:36:14.520)

and we have specifications now,

Lex Fridman (1:36:16.120)

but in a realistic way,

Lex Fridman (1:36:18.720)

they'll probably needs to have a couple of changes

Lex Fridman (1:36:20.680)

and have things that continue to be ironed out,

Lex Fridman (1:36:23.200)

and then have a test net

Vitalik Buterin (1:36:25.560)

that does both the transition and the post transition.

Lex Fridman (1:36:27.960)

And then once you have a test network,

Vitalik Buterin (1:36:30.080)

then you just have to do a lot of testing and audit it,

Lex Fridman (1:36:33.000)

and then do some runs on not just a specialized test network

Lex Fridman (1:36:38.200)

but on say an existing test network

Lex Fridman (1:36:39.880)

like a Robson or Rinkeby

Vitalik Buterin (1:36:41.160)

that Ethereum people already significantly use.

Lex Fridman (1:36:45.520)

And if it works,

Vitalik Buterin (1:36:46.360)

then you can deploy the transition on mainnet.

Lex Fridman (1:36:49.520)

Just as a quick comment,

Vitalik Buterin (1:36:50.920)

because this is fascinating.

Lex Fridman (1:36:52.200)

In August of last year,

Vitalik Buterin (1:36:54.320)

there was this Medalla.

Lex Fridman (1:36:57.520)

I believe it's pronounced Medasha.

Vitalik Buterin (1:36:59.440)

It's a South American subway station.

Lex Fridman (1:37:02.080)

I forget where.

Lex Fridman (1:37:03.000)

But spelled with two Ls.

Lex Fridman (1:37:04.520)

Yeah, yeah,

Lex Fridman (1:37:05.360)

because that's how Spanish works, right?

Lex Fridman (1:37:07.160)

Like the two Ls have a...

Vitalik Buterin (1:37:09.480)

Medasha.

Lex Fridman (1:37:10.320)

Yeah. Okay, cool.

Vitalik Buterin (1:37:11.280)

Anyway, but I read about it in middle of August, August 14th,

Lex Fridman (1:37:15.520)

there was an incident on that test net.

Lex Fridman (1:37:17.800)

How does this process work?

Lex Fridman (1:37:22.040)

What do you learn from those kinds of incidents

Lex Fridman (1:37:23.880)

when stuff goes wrong in the test process?

Lex Fridman (1:37:27.720)

I think that incident was that

Vitalik Buterin (1:37:30.320)

there was a consensus failure of some kind as I remember.

Lex Fridman (1:37:33.760)

Basically just different clients

Vitalik Buterin (1:37:35.680)

interpreting things in different ways,

Lex Fridman (1:37:37.080)

and then one of them getting kicked off the network.

Lex Fridman (1:37:39.360)

And then it ended up taking a while

Lex Fridman (1:37:41.960)

to actually get everyone to get back online.

Vitalik Buterin (1:37:45.320)

A big part of the reason why it took weeks to resolve

Lex Fridman (1:37:47.760)

is because it's on a test network,

Vitalik Buterin (1:37:50.920)

like the coins are valueless.

Lex Fridman (1:37:52.200)

And so there's not really this big push of any kind

Vitalik Buterin (1:37:55.560)

for people to actually go and download the new clients

Lex Fridman (1:37:58.560)

so they can start participating again.

Lex Fridman (1:38:00.480)

And so it definitely took a while

Lex Fridman (1:38:02.840)

until the chain started finalizing again.

Lex Fridman (1:38:06.000)

And then also there was, I think,

Lex Fridman (1:38:08.520)

another round of just not finalizing in October,

Vitalik Buterin (1:38:12.040)

as I remember.

Lex Fridman (1:38:15.720)

There were definitely things that we learned.

Vitalik Buterin (1:38:17.280)

Like there were a lot of things,

Lex Fridman (1:38:18.720)

especially that client developers

Vitalik Buterin (1:38:20.880)

just learned about like optimization

Lex Fridman (1:38:22.840)

and how to build their clients

Vitalik Buterin (1:38:25.800)

in a way that they can process things efficiently.

Lex Fridman (1:38:28.520)

There's a lot that we learned

Vitalik Buterin (1:38:30.360)

from just like seeing the full life cycle

Lex Fridman (1:38:32.360)

of what happens when more than a third of the validators

Vitalik Buterin (1:38:34.920)

go offline and then finalization stops.

Lex Fridman (1:38:37.000)

And then that kind of weird unusual state

Vitalik Buterin (1:38:42.000)

of the chain continues for a while.

Lex Fridman (1:38:43.520)

And then eventually everyone who is not participating

Vitalik Buterin (1:38:46.600)

just gets enough of their stake.

Lex Fridman (1:38:48.920)

Like we don't use the word slashed,

Vitalik Buterin (1:38:50.680)

we use the word leaked for this,

Lex Fridman (1:38:51.920)

but like basically also burned

Vitalik Buterin (1:38:53.400)

until the people who are participating

Lex Fridman (1:38:56.080)

go back up to two thirds

Lex Fridman (1:38:57.080)

and then the chain goes back to finalizing.

Lex Fridman (1:38:59.640)

So just seeing all of those edge cases play out live,

Vitalik Buterin (1:39:03.080)

I think actually helped a lot

Lex Fridman (1:39:04.440)

and probably helped to really contribute

Vitalik Buterin (1:39:05.840)

to making us feel better about Mainnet.

Lex Fridman (1:39:08.960)

I mean, there's also an incident just recently

Vitalik Buterin (1:39:11.400)

in April 24th of 2021

Lex Fridman (1:39:15.040)

where this was on Beacon, I guess.

Vitalik Buterin (1:39:18.440)

There was a bug discovered in the software client Prism

Lex Fridman (1:39:22.680)

that prevented roughly 70% of validators

Vitalik Buterin (1:39:25.480)

on the network from producing blocks.

Lex Fridman (1:39:28.560)

I mean, maybe you can comment on what happened,

Lex Fridman (1:39:30.800)

but broadly like the big picture,

Lex Fridman (1:39:34.360)

what kind of stuff are you worried about

Lex Fridman (1:39:36.680)

in terms of problems that might arise?

Lex Fridman (1:39:39.440)

Are we talking about small bugs?

Vitalik Buterin (1:39:41.280)

Are we talking about like emergent social,

Lex Fridman (1:39:45.440)

unexpected social bugs?

Lex Fridman (1:39:48.080)

What are the things that worry you

Lex Fridman (1:39:49.240)

about the future of Ethereum

Vitalik Buterin (1:39:50.640)

that you want to make sure you construct mechanisms

Lex Fridman (1:39:53.360)

that prevent those things from happening?

Lex Fridman (1:39:55.400)

So one of the lucky things there was

Lex Fridman (1:39:57.600)

that this particular bug only prevented

Vitalik Buterin (1:40:00.160)

proposed self blocks.

Lex Fridman (1:40:01.400)

It did not prevent attestations.

Lex Fridman (1:40:03.400)

So attestations is just a mechanism for voting on blocks.

Lex Fridman (1:40:06.280)

And it's the attestations that are actually responsible

Vitalik Buterin (1:40:08.680)

for the chain finalizing.

Lex Fridman (1:40:09.880)

So like coming to this more permanence agreements on blocks.

Lex Fridman (1:40:12.960)

So the chain was actually quite stable all the way through.

Lex Fridman (1:40:19.080)

I think the thing that we generally learned

Vitalik Buterin (1:40:21.080)

from these experiences is just how valuable it is

Lex Fridman (1:40:26.120)

to have this multi client network.

Lex Fridman (1:40:28.520)

So this is one of these areas where I think Ethereum

Lex Fridman (1:40:30.760)

distinguishes itself from like Bitcoin, for example.

Vitalik Buterin (1:40:33.680)

That in Ethereum, we don't have one single client

Lex Fridman (1:40:38.400)

that everyone just runs, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:40:41.640)

There's multiple implementations of the protocol.

Lex Fridman (1:40:44.520)

And these multiple implementations,

Vitalik Buterin (1:40:46.120)

they all process and verify the blocks

Lex Fridman (1:40:49.440)

that each other can verify, right?

Lex Fridman (1:40:52.560)

So they all speak the same language.

Lex Fridman (1:40:54.280)

Now, sometimes when there's a bug, they disagree.

Lex Fridman (1:40:56.760)

And when two clients disagree because of a bug,

Lex Fridman (1:40:59.240)

we call this a consensus failure.

Lex Fridman (1:41:01.120)

And consensus failures are pretty serious, right?

Lex Fridman (1:41:03.200)

And when you have a client's monoculture like Bitcoin does,

Vitalik Buterin (1:41:08.760)

then it's more rare to have consensus failures.

Lex Fridman (1:41:12.640)

Though you still have them actually.

Vitalik Buterin (1:41:13.840)

Bitcoin had a consensus failure

Lex Fridman (1:41:15.200)

between two different versions of the same client

Vitalik Buterin (1:41:17.240)

back in 2013, but they're less likely to happen.

Lex Fridman (1:41:21.880)

But the interesting thing is that the multi client

Vitalik Buterin (1:41:25.000)

architecture has actually, I think, saved Ethereum

Lex Fridman (1:41:28.320)

much more than it's heard it.

Lex Fridman (1:41:30.040)

So even in this most recent incident, right?

Lex Fridman (1:41:31.960)

Like Prism was not producing blocks,

Lex Fridman (1:41:33.440)

but all the other clients were still producing blocks.

Lex Fridman (1:41:36.920)

There's four others, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:41:38.080)

Yes, it's a Prism, Nimbus, Teku, and the Lighthouse.

Lex Fridman (1:41:43.280)

And then also Ethereum back in 2016 had this fun events

Vitalik Buterin (1:41:47.320)

that we call the Shanghai DOS attacks.

Lex Fridman (1:41:49.440)

They're called that because the attacks started

Vitalik Buterin (1:41:52.840)

right on the first day of our annual conference at DEF CON

Lex Fridman (1:41:56.960)

that happens to be in Shanghai that year.

Lex Fridman (1:41:59.320)

So what happened basically was that someone came up

Lex Fridman (1:42:03.680)

with a way to create blocks that were very slow

Vitalik Buterin (1:42:07.320)

for one client to process, but not the other client.

Lex Fridman (1:42:10.160)

So at that time, there were basically two Ethereum clients.

Vitalik Buterin (1:42:12.880)

They were called Geth and Parity.

Lex Fridman (1:42:15.040)

Right now, I think the top three ones are Geth,

Vitalik Buterin (1:42:18.400)

Nethermind, and Basu.

Lex Fridman (1:42:20.720)

But what happened as a result of us having two clients

Vitalik Buterin (1:42:23.600)

is that the attacker was just not able to come up

Lex Fridman (1:42:26.280)

with blocks that both clients were completely failing

Vitalik Buterin (1:42:31.280)

at processing.

Lex Fridman (1:42:32.240)

And so a lot of the miners and a lot of network participants,

Vitalik Buterin (1:42:35.080)

they just kept on switching between the two implementations

Lex Fridman (1:42:37.760)

depending on which one worked.

Lex Fridman (1:42:39.040)

And that actually really helped the chain survive

Lex Fridman (1:42:44.880)

through that month of attacks as the attacker just kept

Vitalik Buterin (1:42:47.400)

on hammering at our system and identifying all

Lex Fridman (1:42:50.040)

of the weaknesses and just forcing our clients

Vitalik Buterin (1:42:53.080)

to do this rapid sprint of just optimizing the hell

Lex Fridman (1:42:56.480)

out of everything and make sure there aren't any

Vitalik Buterin (1:42:58.640)

of those DOS blocks or DOS bugs remaining.

Lex Fridman (1:43:02.520)

So that was another example.

Lex Fridman (1:43:04.760)

And then as a counter example,

Lex Fridman (1:43:07.360)

so something that also shows the point from the other side,

Vitalik Buterin (1:43:11.240)

Bitcoin had this bug in 2010, the balance overflow bug.

Lex Fridman (1:43:15.640)

Basically someone created a transaction that had two outputs

Lex Fridman (1:43:20.280)

and those outputs were both of a few billion Bitcoin.

Lex Fridman (1:43:24.720)

So like about two to the power of 63 Satoshis.

Lex Fridman (1:43:27.920)

And then if you add those numbers together,

Lex Fridman (1:43:29.440)

you'll go above two to the power of 64.

Lex Fridman (1:43:31.800)

And of course, computers like once you go above

Lex Fridman (1:43:35.000)

to the power of 64, you wrap around.

Lex Fridman (1:43:36.920)

And so the Bitcoin nodes thought that there was enough money

Lex Fridman (1:43:40.680)

to pay for the transaction because it was asking for,

Vitalik Buterin (1:43:42.680)

let's say like a billion Satoshis or something,

Lex Fridman (1:43:44.400)

but actually it was asking for two to the power

Vitalik Buterin (1:43:46.520)

of 64 plus a billion.

Lex Fridman (1:43:48.120)

And so the attacker just managed to create like billions

Vitalik Buterin (1:43:51.400)

of Bitcoin out of thin air.

Lex Fridman (1:43:53.120)

And this was not only discovered and fixed

Vitalik Buterin (1:43:57.320)

after something like 12 hours,

Lex Fridman (1:43:59.800)

but if there had been,

Vitalik Buterin (1:44:02.360)

if Bitcoin had been a multiple implementation system,

Lex Fridman (1:44:05.040)

then what would have almost certainly happened

Vitalik Buterin (1:44:08.160)

is like one of the clients would have bugged out,

Lex Fridman (1:44:10.680)

but the other clients would have probably

Lex Fridman (1:44:13.280)

actually had a check for that, right?

Lex Fridman (1:44:15.040)

And so there would have been a consensus failure,

Lex Fridman (1:44:17.440)

but at least that would have like alerted everyone

Lex Fridman (1:44:21.440)

that there is a problem very quickly.

Lex Fridman (1:44:24.080)

And it also would have given everyone

Lex Fridman (1:44:25.680)

just like obvious social permission to go and, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (1:44:28.440)

pick whichever one of the chains is correct

Lex Fridman (1:44:30.480)

and solve the problem.

Lex Fridman (1:44:31.960)

So like, that's, I think a big learning that we've had

Lex Fridman (1:44:36.920)

from multiple of our experiences in the Ethereum ecosystem,

Vitalik Buterin (1:44:40.240)

just like validating this multi client model.

Lex Fridman (1:44:43.240)

And like, to be fair,

Lex Fridman (1:44:44.080)

it's a model that we get criticized for a lot, right?

Lex Fridman (1:44:46.160)

Like Bitcoin people talk about, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (1:44:48.280)

the risk of consensus failures that this creates.

Lex Fridman (1:44:51.120)

VC types are like, well, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (1:44:53.160)

isn't it expensive and wasteful to fund three software teams

Lex Fridman (1:44:55.840)

where you could just be making, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (1:44:57.080)

one quote focused effort, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:44:59.480)

they love the word focused.

Lex Fridman (1:45:00.640)

And like, you know, Ethereum is not that,

Lex Fridman (1:45:02.480)

but it's amazing despite not being that.

Vitalik Buterin (1:45:04.520)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:45:08.560)

Basically, yeah, so that was interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:45:12.600)

And then there have definitely been other learnings as well,

Lex Fridman (1:45:16.680)

just from like seeing the chain live

Lex Fridman (1:45:18.640)

and seeing what actually is the staking experience like,

Lex Fridman (1:45:23.160)

what are the actual incentives

Vitalik Buterin (1:45:24.920)

for all the different participants.

Lex Fridman (1:45:26.480)

So I definitely feel like we're gaining a lot

Vitalik Buterin (1:45:28.960)

from this sort of one year of trial running the chain

Lex Fridman (1:45:31.920)

before we actually make all of Ethereum depend on it.

Vitalik Buterin (1:45:35.640)

Let me ask perhaps a strange question,

Lex Fridman (1:45:37.640)

but you know, proponents of Bitcoin will say things like,

Vitalik Buterin (1:45:41.320)

Bitcoin fixes everything.

Lex Fridman (1:45:44.080)

So why do we need Ethereum?

Vitalik Buterin (1:45:47.880)

Versus like Bitcoin plus lightning network for scalability

Lex Fridman (1:45:54.520)

and then using Bitcoin for,

Vitalik Buterin (1:45:56.320)

with this proof of work for security.

Lex Fridman (1:45:58.600)

So in this kind of, it is perhaps sort of a strange question,

Lex Fridman (1:46:02.840)

but it's a high level question.

Lex Fridman (1:46:04.080)

Why do we need another technology?

Vitalik Buterin (1:46:07.360)

Yes, it has a bunch of nice features,

Lex Fridman (1:46:09.560)

but like doesn't Bitcoin fix everything already?

Lex Fridman (1:46:13.120)

So the thing that always attracted me about Bitcoin

Lex Fridman (1:46:17.280)

is these values of decentralization,

Vitalik Buterin (1:46:20.520)

creating these open provisional systems

Lex Fridman (1:46:22.960)

that anyone can participate in

Lex Fridman (1:46:24.720)

and that aren't just going to flop over and die

Lex Fridman (1:46:27.200)

if whoever created them gets bored

Lex Fridman (1:46:28.840)

and that are resistant to like whoever runs them

Lex Fridman (1:46:33.640)

breaking the rules and all of these things.

Lex Fridman (1:46:35.400)

And I think that pretty strongly that these principles

Lex Fridman (1:46:38.680)

are like really valid in importance

Lex Fridman (1:46:40.640)

to much more things than just money, right?

Lex Fridman (1:46:42.520)

Like Bitcoin is the blockchain for money

Lex Fridman (1:46:45.040)

and Ethereum was built from the start

Lex Fridman (1:46:47.040)

as a general purpose blockchain, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:46:49.720)

There is ether the asset on Ethereum,

Lex Fridman (1:46:51.560)

but then you can also make decentralized financial things,

Lex Fridman (1:46:56.040)

what we call DeFi today.

Lex Fridman (1:46:58.400)

You can make like ENS, the decentralized domain name system.

Vitalik Buterin (1:47:02.280)

You can put, make prediction markets on it.

Lex Fridman (1:47:05.000)

You can make totally nonfinancial systems

Vitalik Buterin (1:47:09.200)

that just like keep track of whether or not

Lex Fridman (1:47:11.960)

some certificate was signed

Vitalik Buterin (1:47:13.400)

or whether or not some like cryptographic key got revoked.

Lex Fridman (1:47:16.720)

There's this big long list of like just interesting things

Lex Fridman (1:47:21.280)

that you could use about blockchains to do, right?

Lex Fridman (1:47:23.440)

Like basically they are sort of the missing piece

Vitalik Buterin (1:47:26.480)

that where without them,

Lex Fridman (1:47:29.320)

the kinds of things that a decentralized computer network

Vitalik Buterin (1:47:31.600)

can do is very limited.

Lex Fridman (1:47:32.760)

And once you have them,

Vitalik Buterin (1:47:33.600)

a lot of those limitations end up going away.

Lex Fridman (1:47:36.440)

And so Ethereum was like always from the beginning

Lex Fridman (1:47:42.120)

about that, right?

Lex Fridman (1:47:43.040)

It's about like, hey, this isn't just money.

Vitalik Buterin (1:47:45.160)

There's so much more that you could do

Lex Fridman (1:47:48.200)

if you could just go ahead and make any infrastructure

Vitalik Buterin (1:47:51.560)

or digital institution or DAO

Lex Fridman (1:47:54.080)

or whatever you wanna call it,

Vitalik Buterin (1:47:55.560)

where the kind of the base layer of the logic

Lex Fridman (1:47:58.640)

is just executed in this open and transparent way

Vitalik Buterin (1:48:00.920)

where everyone can see what's going on

Lex Fridman (1:48:03.400)

or if you like your zero knowledge proofs,

Vitalik Buterin (1:48:05.360)

at least everyone can see proofs that prove to you

Lex Fridman (1:48:07.360)

that what's going on follows the rules

Lex Fridman (1:48:09.560)

and you don't need to just constantly keep trusting

Lex Fridman (1:48:13.640)

centralized actors.

Vitalik Buterin (1:48:16.080)

Hence the smart contracts

Lex Fridman (1:48:18.120)

as being a sort of a core technology as part of Ethereum.

Vitalik Buterin (1:48:21.520)

Yes, exactly.

Lex Fridman (1:48:22.360)

Smart contracts, the computer programs

Vitalik Buterin (1:48:24.760)

that are running on Ethereum,

Lex Fridman (1:48:25.840)

they are like the core

Vitalik Buterin (1:48:26.960)

of what makes Ethereum general purpose.

Lex Fridman (1:48:29.080)

Yeah, so I do think that there's a lot more wrong

Lex Fridman (1:48:35.520)

with the world than just money, right?

Lex Fridman (1:48:37.360)

Like I'm not one of these people who thinks that

Vitalik Buterin (1:48:40.080)

if you get rid of fiat currency

Lex Fridman (1:48:42.160)

and you replace it with cryptocurrency,

Lex Fridman (1:48:43.560)

then suddenly wars are gonna go away, right?

Lex Fridman (1:48:45.440)

Because like, first of all,

Vitalik Buterin (1:48:48.080)

like say your average revenue

Lex Fridman (1:48:49.120)

is only a small portion of government revenue, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:48:51.480)

It's like what, 5%, 10%, something like that.

Lex Fridman (1:48:54.400)

Second of all, like if you are the sort of,

Vitalik Buterin (1:48:58.920)

this is one of the things

Lex Fridman (1:48:59.760)

I don't even get about their philosophy.

Vitalik Buterin (1:49:01.000)

Like, let's say you're the sort of person

Lex Fridman (1:49:02.840)

who is an extreme and very distrusting libertarian

Lex Fridman (1:49:06.600)

and you think that these governments are terrible, right?

Lex Fridman (1:49:09.320)

Like we know today that governments

Vitalik Buterin (1:49:11.440)

find a combination of things like welfare

Lex Fridman (1:49:15.080)

and things like the military

Lex Fridman (1:49:17.520)

that goes and like bombs people in Afghanistan, right?

Lex Fridman (1:49:21.000)

And so the question you have to ask is like, okay,

Vitalik Buterin (1:49:24.240)

you with your new, you know, magic newfangled cyber currency

Lex Fridman (1:49:30.560)

that takes over the world,

Vitalik Buterin (1:49:32.160)

take away the government's ability

Lex Fridman (1:49:33.560)

to have seniorized revenue

Lex Fridman (1:49:34.960)

and so you reduce the government's revenue by 10%.

Lex Fridman (1:49:37.760)

If the government is that evil,

Vitalik Buterin (1:49:39.440)

which portion of its expenses

Lex Fridman (1:49:41.720)

is it gonna take that 10% from?

Vitalik Buterin (1:49:43.680)

Is it gonna stop the bombing people in Afghanistan

Lex Fridman (1:49:45.840)

or is it gonna cut welfare?

Vitalik Buterin (1:49:47.680)

If you think it's the first,

Lex Fridman (1:49:48.640)

you have a very optimistic view of the government, right?

Lex Fridman (1:49:51.560)

So that's, I guess, my perspective

Lex Fridman (1:49:55.920)

on like why the whole, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (1:49:58.480)

we're going to save the world and create peace

Lex Fridman (1:50:02.840)

by like denying governments the right

Vitalik Buterin (1:50:04.760)

to stealth taxation kind of perspective

Lex Fridman (1:50:07.680)

doesn't really make much sense for me.

Lex Fridman (1:50:09.520)

And I do think that there is real value

Lex Fridman (1:50:11.200)

that comes from a decentralized and open currency.

Vitalik Buterin (1:50:14.920)

Like just the fact that there is a financial infrastructure

Lex Fridman (1:50:18.320)

that anyone in the world can go ahead and use, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:50:21.680)

It's, that's something that can easily be

Lex Fridman (1:50:24.600)

a big boon for people, right?

Vitalik Buterin (1:50:25.680)

There's a lot of places where the currency

Lex Fridman (1:50:29.840)

and is much less stable than the dollar.

Vitalik Buterin (1:50:32.640)

And, you know, these people like they don't like,

Lex Fridman (1:50:35.880)

well, if they use Bitcoin,

Lex Fridman (1:50:37.520)

their only option is to get Bitcoins, right?

Lex Fridman (1:50:39.240)

Which, you know, are also pretty volatile.

Vitalik Buterin (1:50:42.120)

If they use Ethereum, then, you know, they can get ether,

Lex Fridman (1:50:44.280)

but then they can also get stable coins, right?

Lex Fridman (1:50:46.000)

And you might think that, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:50:47.800)

oh, you're not being ideologically pure.

Vitalik Buterin (1:50:49.840)

Now you're giving them stable coins,

Lex Fridman (1:50:51.160)

which are mirroring dollars.

Lex Fridman (1:50:52.360)

And obviously dollars are going to collapse too.

Lex Fridman (1:50:54.320)

But the reality is that dollars are vastly more stable

Vitalik Buterin (1:50:56.720)

than the Venezuelan Bolivar.

Lex Fridman (1:50:58.440)

So like, there are really meaningful and beneficial things

Vitalik Buterin (1:51:04.520)

that you can give to people by having a global

Lex Fridman (1:51:07.800)

and open financial system.

Lex Fridman (1:51:09.080)

But I think if you want to actually do that,

Lex Fridman (1:51:11.680)

like you have to have much more than just a currency, right?

Lex Fridman (1:51:14.120)

And then if you want to go beyond financial things,

Lex Fridman (1:51:16.280)

then, you know, you have to obviously have much more

Vitalik Buterin (1:51:19.880)

than a currency and then, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:51:21.680)

you also have to actually take scalability seriously

Vitalik Buterin (1:51:24.960)

because the nonfinancial applications,

Lex Fridman (1:51:26.640)

like nobody's going to pay $5 a transaction for them.

Lex Fridman (1:51:31.160)

Can we return to dogs?

Lex Fridman (1:51:33.840)

Sure.

Vitalik Buterin (1:51:34.680)

Woof, woof.

Lex Fridman (1:51:35.520)

No, no, no, no, no.

Vitalik Buterin (1:51:40.200)

The other one's categorically forbidden.

Lex Fridman (1:51:41.840)

Yeah, categorically forbidden.

Lex Fridman (1:51:43.320)

Is there any cryptocurrency based on cats actually?

Lex Fridman (1:51:45.960)

I think there are.

Vitalik Buterin (1:51:46.880)

Like, there was cat coin, there was nan coin.

Lex Fridman (1:51:49.600)

For some reason, they just didn't catch on as much

Vitalik Buterin (1:51:51.600)

as the dog coins did.

Lex Fridman (1:51:53.160)

Okay, so let's talk about Dogecoin and Elon Musk.

Vitalik Buterin (1:51:57.840)

Elon said that, quote, ideally,

Lex Fridman (1:52:01.480)

Doge speeds up block time 10x,

Vitalik Buterin (1:52:04.680)

increases block size 10x, and drops fee 100x.

Lex Fridman (1:52:10.520)

Then it wins hands down, end quote.

Vitalik Buterin (1:52:14.160)

You said in a blog post, partially responding to that,

Lex Fridman (1:52:18.320)

that there are subtle technical reasons

Lex Fridman (1:52:20.600)

why this is not possible.

Lex Fridman (1:52:23.800)

To this, Elon said that you, quote, fear the Doge.

Lex Fridman (1:52:30.400)

So let's talk about this.

Lex Fridman (1:52:31.600)

What are the technical hurdles for Dogecoin

Vitalik Buterin (1:52:34.600)

that prevent it from becoming

Lex Fridman (1:52:35.920)

one of the primary cryptocurrencies of the world?

Lex Fridman (1:52:38.880)

And do you, in fact, fear the Doge?

Lex Fridman (1:52:41.320)

I definitely feel obligated to correct the record.

Vitalik Buterin (1:52:43.640)

I definitely do not fear the Doge.

Lex Fridman (1:52:45.440)

Okay.

Vitalik Buterin (1:52:46.280)

No, I love the Doge.

Lex Fridman (1:52:47.200)

I actually visited the Doge in Japan a few years back.

Vitalik Buterin (1:52:51.680)

She's an amazing dog, she's still alive.

Lex Fridman (1:52:54.000)

Wait, the original Doge?

Vitalik Buterin (1:52:55.160)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:52:56.000)

Oh, wow.

Vitalik Buterin (1:52:58.480)

So, you know, we accept Doge every year

Lex Fridman (1:53:02.920)

for our annual DEF CON conferences.

Vitalik Buterin (1:53:05.640)

So, I definitely don't think Ethereum

Lex Fridman (1:53:09.280)

is opposed to Doge coins.

Vitalik Buterin (1:53:11.480)

I kind of want to feel like Ethereum

Lex Fridman (1:53:13.760)

is at least a little bit in spirit itself a Dogecoin.

Lex Fridman (1:53:16.000)

And then, as I mentioned, I love Doge,

Lex Fridman (1:53:18.920)

I bought a bunch of Doge, I still hold a bunch of Doge.

Vitalik Buterin (1:53:24.000)

On the scalability question,

Lex Fridman (1:53:25.560)

the challenge basically is the limits to scalability

Lex Fridman (1:53:29.760)

and the trade offs with centralization, right?

Lex Fridman (1:53:31.920)

If you just increase the parameters

Vitalik Buterin (1:53:33.920)

without doing anything else,

Lex Fridman (1:53:34.760)

then it just becomes more and more difficult

Vitalik Buterin (1:53:37.280)

for people to validate the chain

Lex Fridman (1:53:38.640)

and it just becomes more likely that the chain

Vitalik Buterin (1:53:41.960)

becomes centralized and becomes vulnerable

Lex Fridman (1:53:44.320)

to all kinds of capture.

Vitalik Buterin (1:53:45.960)

So, does it need like some of the layer two technologies

Lex Fridman (1:53:48.800)

that we've been talking about?

Vitalik Buterin (1:53:50.960)

I personally think that if Doge wants to somehow bridge

Lex Fridman (1:53:55.080)

through Ethereum and then people can trade Doge

Vitalik Buterin (1:53:57.400)

thousands of times a second inside of a loop ring,

Lex Fridman (1:53:59.760)

then that would be amazing.

Vitalik Buterin (1:54:01.640)

If they want to just like take ZK roll up style technology

Lex Fridman (1:54:05.280)

and just have thousands of transactions a second

Vitalik Buterin (1:54:07.520)

on their own chain, then that would be a great outcome

Lex Fridman (1:54:10.800)

as well.

Vitalik Buterin (1:54:11.640)

So, is there ways for Ethereum and Dogecoin

Lex Fridman (1:54:15.160)

to work together?

Vitalik Buterin (1:54:16.880)

Okay, so there's a power behind a person like Elon Musk

Lex Fridman (1:54:22.040)

pushing the development of a cryptocurrency.

Vitalik Buterin (1:54:25.600)

Is there ways to leverage that power and that momentum

Lex Fridman (1:54:30.000)

to improve Ethereum, to improve some of the sort of

Vitalik Buterin (1:54:33.480)

cryptocurrencies that are already technologically advanced

Lex Fridman (1:54:38.120)

and pushing forward that kind of technology?

Vitalik Buterin (1:54:41.440)

I definitely think there's room for...

Lex Fridman (1:54:45.320)

You know that meme of Doge like taking over,

Lex Fridman (1:54:48.840)

like that storm?

Lex Fridman (1:54:49.880)

I've seen it.

Vitalik Buterin (1:54:50.720)

Is there a way to ride that storm, that wave of the Doge

Lex Fridman (1:54:56.080)

that's taking over?

Vitalik Buterin (1:54:57.200)

I think if we can have a secure Doge to Ethereum bridge,

Lex Fridman (1:55:00.360)

then that would be amazing.

Lex Fridman (1:55:02.040)

And then when Ethereum gets its scalability,

Lex Fridman (1:55:04.400)

any scalability thing that works for Ethereum assets,

Vitalik Buterin (1:55:07.600)

you would be able to also trade wrapped Doge

Lex Fridman (1:55:10.400)

with extremely low transaction fees

Lex Fridman (1:55:11.880)

and very high speed as well.

Lex Fridman (1:55:13.320)

Is there precedence for building secure bridges

Lex Fridman (1:55:16.640)

between cryptocurrencies?

Lex Fridman (1:55:18.520)

Is that, I mean, how difficult is this kind of task?

Vitalik Buterin (1:55:21.240)

It's definitely something that's in its infancy.

Lex Fridman (1:55:23.960)

There definitely have been some cross chain interaction

Vitalik Buterin (1:55:26.480)

things that have been done before.

Lex Fridman (1:55:28.200)

So, the earliest is probably the concept of merge mining,

Vitalik Buterin (1:55:30.920)

right, when a chain just makes its entire

Lex Fridman (1:55:34.200)

proof of work algorithm dependent on

Vitalik Buterin (1:55:36.480)

the proof of work algorithm of another chain.

Lex Fridman (1:55:38.960)

So, I think famous Dogecoin actually merge mines

Vitalik Buterin (1:55:41.840)

to Litecoin, which is, I think in retrospect,

Lex Fridman (1:55:44.160)

not looking like a very good choice

Vitalik Buterin (1:55:45.560)

because now Dogecoin is bigger than Litecoin.

Lex Fridman (1:55:49.000)

But, you know, if there's potentially some way

Vitalik Buterin (1:55:53.480)

for Dogecoin to merge mine with an Ethereum proof

Lex Fridman (1:55:57.680)

of stake of some kinds,

Vitalik Buterin (1:55:59.080)

then that could be an interesting alternative.

Lex Fridman (1:56:04.200)

So, that's one type of chain interaction.

Vitalik Buterin (1:56:06.600)

As far as bridges, like one chain reading another chain,

Lex Fridman (1:56:09.640)

early in Ethereum's history,

Vitalik Buterin (1:56:10.920)

there was this project called BTC Relay.

Lex Fridman (1:56:13.000)

It's a smart contract on Ethereum

Vitalik Buterin (1:56:14.640)

that just verifies Bitcoin blocks.

Lex Fridman (1:56:17.000)

I think people stopped really caring about it

Lex Fridman (1:56:20.160)

and maintaining it because there just weren't enough

Lex Fridman (1:56:22.320)

applications that were actually interested

Vitalik Buterin (1:56:24.720)

in using it at the time.

Lex Fridman (1:56:25.720)

And then the transaction fees got too high

Vitalik Buterin (1:56:27.560)

to actually maintain it.

Lex Fridman (1:56:28.920)

So, I think if we want to make a BTC Relay 2.0,

Vitalik Buterin (1:56:33.360)

that becomes cheaper because, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:56:35.520)

it uses snarks or something like that,

Vitalik Buterin (1:56:37.040)

then you probably could.

Lex Fridman (1:56:38.200)

But maybe now's the time when you actually

Vitalik Buterin (1:56:42.040)

can do that sort of one way verification.

Lex Fridman (1:56:44.360)

But the one challenge though,

Vitalik Buterin (1:56:45.440)

is that if he wants to have a bridge

Lex Fridman (1:56:47.760)

that allows you to move assets between chains,

Vitalik Buterin (1:56:49.920)

then you don't just need one way verification,

Lex Fridman (1:56:52.000)

you need two way verification, right?

Lex Fridman (1:56:53.920)

And Ethereum can verify anything

Lex Fridman (1:56:55.400)

because Ethereum smart contracts

Vitalik Buterin (1:56:57.000)

can just run arbitrary code.

Lex Fridman (1:56:58.760)

But if you want Bitcoin to be able to do things

Vitalik Buterin (1:57:02.040)

based on what happens in Ethereum lands,

Lex Fridman (1:57:03.800)

then Bitcoin would have to basically,

Vitalik Buterin (1:57:06.200)

well, they can do everything with soft forks

Lex Fridman (1:57:07.760)

because that's their religion,

Lex Fridman (1:57:10.000)

but they'll do it that way.

Lex Fridman (1:57:12.560)

And if Doge wants to make a fork

Vitalik Buterin (1:57:15.120)

where that allows for two way transferability

Lex Fridman (1:57:19.840)

with Ethereum, then they could.

Vitalik Buterin (1:57:22.000)

I mean, I think that would be a lovely collaboration

Lex Fridman (1:57:24.640)

to make if there's interest.

Vitalik Buterin (1:57:27.200)

I think there might actually even be some multi SIG funds

Lex Fridman (1:57:30.800)

that has some funding.

Vitalik Buterin (1:57:34.280)

It's just a bounty for someone

Lex Fridman (1:57:35.560)

to make a bridge between the two.

Vitalik Buterin (1:57:37.280)

Oh, could you maybe try to psychoanalyze Elon Musk

Lex Fridman (1:57:40.960)

for a brief second?

Lex Fridman (1:57:42.520)

So what are your thoughts about Tesla and Elon Musk's

Lex Fridman (1:57:47.240)

journey through the cryptocurrency world?

Lex Fridman (1:57:49.880)

So first with Bitcoin and then with Dogecoin.

Lex Fridman (1:57:53.040)

So acquiring, holding a large amount of Bitcoin.

Lex Fridman (1:57:57.400)

And I believe, at least considering the acquiring

Lex Fridman (1:58:01.440)

and holding a large amount of Dogecoin.

Vitalik Buterin (1:58:03.640)

Positives, negatives, what do you think the future

Lex Fridman (1:58:06.480)

for Tesla and SpaceX in the cryptocurrency space looks like?

Lex Fridman (1:58:10.040)

Do you think they'll consider Ethereum?

Lex Fridman (1:58:13.120)

I'm sure that if they stay in the cryptocurrency system

Vitalik Buterin (1:58:17.640)

at all, then they have to at some point.

Lex Fridman (1:58:19.480)

Bitcoin number one, Dogecoin number,

Vitalik Buterin (1:58:27.000)

I mean, come on, it deserves to be number three.

Lex Fridman (1:58:29.440)

And then, or number two.

Lex Fridman (1:58:31.280)

And then Ethereum can be whatever that other number is.

Lex Fridman (1:58:39.960)

If Ethereum only becomes a Dogecoin somehow,

Vitalik Buterin (1:58:42.680)

maybe change the logo to incorporate a dog of some sort.

Lex Fridman (1:58:46.440)

Almost like Doge sneaking behind.

Vitalik Buterin (1:58:50.320)

Oh, that would be fascinating.

Lex Fridman (1:58:52.200)

For when the merge happens.

Lex Fridman (1:58:53.120)

And I think, Elon, you definitely,

Lex Fridman (1:58:56.480)

I think you would make a mistake

Vitalik Buterin (1:58:58.160)

if you were to kind of ascribe too much sophisticated,

Lex Fridman (1:59:02.280)

malevolent, or any deep intentionality to the whole process.

Vitalik Buterin (1:59:07.280)

I think he's just a human being and he likes dogs,

Lex Fridman (1:59:10.160)

just like I like dogs.

Vitalik Buterin (1:59:11.280)

Yeah, I think that is literally the reasoning

Lex Fridman (1:59:14.120)

behind the whole Dogecoin thing.

Vitalik Buterin (1:59:16.240)

There is some aspect to which,

Lex Fridman (1:59:18.400)

I mean, the guy helped launch a car into space, right?

Lex Fridman (1:59:24.240)

Like you could ask, like, what is the purpose of that?

Lex Fridman (1:59:27.560)

I think the purpose of that is fun.

Vitalik Buterin (1:59:31.280)

I think he truly is more and more, especially lately,

Lex Fridman (1:59:35.160)

embodying the whole idea that the most entertaining outcome

Vitalik Buterin (1:59:39.760)

is the most likely and he's fully embracing

Lex Fridman (1:59:42.320)

the most entertaining outcome.

Lex Fridman (1:59:44.040)

And in many ways, Dogecoin is the most

Lex Fridman (1:59:46.240)

entertaining cryptocurrency.

Vitalik Buterin (1:59:48.320)

As cryptocurrency becomes more and more impactful

Lex Fridman (1:59:50.840)

in the world, people are getting

Vitalik Buterin (1:59:52.520)

more and more serious about it.

Lex Fridman (1:59:53.920)

And so he's selecting the cryptocurrency

Vitalik Buterin (1:59:56.000)

that is the least serious and the most fun.

Lex Fridman (1:59:59.280)

And there's something to that,

Vitalik Buterin (20:01.300)

and, you know, there are definitely areas

Lex Fridman (20:03.620)

where there's tensions,

Lex Fridman (20:04.700)

but in those areas where there's tensions,

Lex Fridman (20:08.200)

like, there could be some kind of creative

Lex Fridman (20:10.500)

and interesting approaches that get figured out, right?

Lex Fridman (20:13.060)

Like, you know, the concept of corporate taxes,

Lex Fridman (20:16.300)

for example, right?

Lex Fridman (20:17.140)

Like, you know, that would disappear as a revenue stream

Vitalik Buterin (20:21.060)

if theoretically corporations just all get replaced by DAOs

Lex Fridman (20:23.780)

but, you know, like maybe there's some other creative way

Vitalik Buterin (20:28.220)

by which DAOs themselves can kind of be code,

Lex Fridman (20:34.680)

you know, have some kind of encoded governance

Vitalik Buterin (20:36.480)

that ensures that they have at least some kind of bias

Lex Fridman (20:41.120)

towards serving the global public good

Vitalik Buterin (20:43.260)

and, you know, maybe DAOs can do enough of that

Lex Fridman (20:47.660)

that people are happy with it.

Vitalik Buterin (20:48.900)

And, you know, there are going to be things

Lex Fridman (20:51.100)

that people are unhappy about.

Vitalik Buterin (20:52.220)

There's always gonna be the people

Lex Fridman (20:53.420)

that, you know, wants to surveil everyone

Lex Fridman (20:55.700)

but if the kind of effect of crypto

Lex Fridman (21:01.380)

from just empowering people is greater than that

Lex Fridman (21:04.300)

and greater than that in a way

Lex Fridman (21:05.360)

that people can just easily see,

Lex Fridman (21:07.200)

then, you know, that would be a good scenario, right?

Lex Fridman (21:09.280)

And we'll just become kind of incorporated and accepted

Vitalik Buterin (21:13.580)

the same way as happened with the internet.

Lex Fridman (21:16.500)

But in the worst case scenario would, of course,

Vitalik Buterin (21:19.820)

be just like people suddenly, you know,

Lex Fridman (21:23.340)

flipping and going into moral panic mode

Lex Fridman (21:25.460)

and just, you know, oh my God,

Lex Fridman (21:27.000)

like this technology is used by like, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (21:29.500)

insert bad group over the day.

Lex Fridman (21:31.180)

And then I don't think governments have the ability

Vitalik Buterin (21:33.780)

to ban crypto to the extent of just complete

Lex Fridman (21:36.940)

like preventing blockchains from existing

Lex Fridman (21:39.340)

but they definitely have the ability

Lex Fridman (21:40.740)

to really marginalize it, right?

Vitalik Buterin (21:42.460)

Like if you just ban all exchanges,

Lex Fridman (21:45.300)

like in ban all links from the Fiat ecosystem to crypto

Vitalik Buterin (21:48.380)

and, you know, you ban all kind of mainstream employers

Lex Fridman (21:51.420)

from accepting or paying in cryptocurrency,

Vitalik Buterin (21:54.660)

then like you can successfully like turn it into a,

Lex Fridman (22:01.100)

like, you know, a fairly kind of niche countercultural thing

Vitalik Buterin (22:03.940)

that has much less impact than otherwise would.

Lex Fridman (22:07.540)

So it's somewhere between the good scenario

Lex Fridman (22:09.860)

and the bad scenario.

Lex Fridman (22:10.680)

I'm obviously hoping for the good.

Vitalik Buterin (22:12.460)

Well, that's interesting also the tension

Lex Fridman (22:14.020)

between governments and companies.

Vitalik Buterin (22:17.620)

Like if you have a bunch of billionaires

Lex Fridman (22:19.300)

or a bunch of companies like Tesla investing in Bitcoin

Lex Fridman (22:22.100)

and then governments resisting that,

Lex Fridman (22:24.700)

it's interesting who wins out in that worst case scenario.

Lex Fridman (22:27.740)

And almost when companies and rich, quote unquote,

Lex Fridman (22:34.020)

respectable people embrace cryptocurrencies,

Vitalik Buterin (22:37.840)

Bitcoin, Ethereum, so on, even the dot coins,

Lex Fridman (22:41.780)

it's almost sends a signal to everybody else

Vitalik Buterin (22:44.180)

that this is a revolution that's here to stay.

Lex Fridman (22:49.300)

On this one little tangent that you brought up,

Vitalik Buterin (22:52.500)

this is almost an outdated idea, but it's still with us,

Lex Fridman (22:55.900)

which is cryptocurrencies are used for illegal activity,

Vitalik Buterin (22:59.740)

for drugs, for crime, and so on.

Lex Fridman (23:02.940)

Is there some sense that worries you

Vitalik Buterin (23:05.820)

that if cryptocurrency, if Ethereum runs the world,

Lex Fridman (23:11.900)

then making money from crime will be easier?

Vitalik Buterin (23:17.060)

There's always that possibility, but like at the same time,

Lex Fridman (23:20.320)

I think if you look at, you know, the world as a whole

Lex Fridman (23:23.180)

and like the way all the other technological trends

Lex Fridman (23:26.260)

are going, like, you know, in person surveillance

Lex Fridman (23:28.500)

is just going up every year, right?

Lex Fridman (23:30.420)

Like if you commit a crime in, you know, meat space,

Vitalik Buterin (23:34.260)

it's getting harder and harder to get away with it.

Lex Fridman (23:36.700)

So like, you know, if you wants to do something,

Lex Fridman (23:40.120)

and this is something that's just like happening

Lex Fridman (23:42.560)

as a result of, you know, just better technology

Lex Fridman (23:45.060)

and information transparency,

Lex Fridman (23:46.900)

like a lot of it's hard to prevent even if you really tried.

Lex Fridman (23:51.100)

So the world where like things go dark to such an extent,

Lex Fridman (23:57.820)

you know, as the police hawks sometimes like to say,

Vitalik Buterin (24:01.580)

to such an extent that like, you know, oh my God,

Lex Fridman (24:04.340)

the criminals are committing crimes with impunity

Lex Fridman (24:06.340)

and we can't see anything, like that just seems unlikely.

Lex Fridman (24:09.820)

But, you know, on the other hand,

Vitalik Buterin (24:11.540)

like the world where there just, you know,

Lex Fridman (24:16.540)

is no privacy, for example, or the world where there just

Vitalik Buterin (24:21.900)

like is no ability to kind of act outside of the confines

Lex Fridman (24:28.940)

of, you know, mainstream institutions,

Vitalik Buterin (24:30.740)

like that's something that's more realistic

Lex Fridman (24:34.860)

and that seems like something that could lead

Lex Fridman (24:37.940)

to a lot of kind of a lot of scary things, right?

Lex Fridman (24:40.820)

And like, even from a government's point of view, right?

Vitalik Buterin (24:42.820)

Like I think governments over the last few years,

Lex Fridman (24:45.220)

a lot of them, they're very worried about sovereignty.

Vitalik Buterin (24:47.860)

You know, they're worried about like,

Lex Fridman (24:49.020)

if their country is economies and, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (24:53.540)

social environments are just completely dependent

Lex Fridman (24:55.940)

on basically foreign tech companies controlled

Vitalik Buterin (24:58.180)

by foreign governments, like, you know,

Lex Fridman (24:59.620)

governments are not on team government, right?

Vitalik Buterin (25:01.220)

It's like, you know, the Indian government is on,

Lex Fridman (25:04.180)

you know, team India, then the Russian government

Lex Fridman (25:06.380)

is on team Russia and so forth, right?

Lex Fridman (25:08.140)

So like, you know, they don't want the US to be able

Vitalik Buterin (25:12.660)

to like have this big backdoor into everything.

Lex Fridman (25:14.980)

So, I mean, I do think that a balance is needed,

Lex Fridman (25:17.980)

but at the same time, I do think,

Lex Fridman (25:24.940)

I guess I definitely like worry more

Vitalik Buterin (25:28.700)

about the possibility that just like without things

Lex Fridman (25:35.220)

to like crypto kind of acting outside of institutions

Vitalik Buterin (25:38.740)

becomes too impossible.

Lex Fridman (25:40.860)

And I don't even necessarily mean outside of governments,

Vitalik Buterin (25:42.660)

even just, you know, outside of corporations,

Lex Fridman (25:44.260)

like becomes too impossible.

Lex Fridman (25:45.420)

And there's just like terrible things

Lex Fridman (25:46.580)

that come as a result.

Vitalik Buterin (25:48.340)

I mean, if things going in the other direction,

Lex Fridman (25:50.220)

like it obviously is a risk, but no,

Vitalik Buterin (25:54.460)

at the same time, I think in the longterm,

Lex Fridman (25:56.780)

like a crypto can potentially even like offer defenses

Vitalik Buterin (26:01.620)

as much as attacks against that sort of thing.

Lex Fridman (26:03.420)

Yeah, many throughout history,

Vitalik Buterin (26:05.460)

many of the most destructive things came

Lex Fridman (26:07.300)

from centralized institutions versus sort of

Vitalik Buterin (26:10.260)

from the people operating in the shadows.

Lex Fridman (26:13.100)

And, you know, I've been talking to a bunch

Vitalik Buterin (26:15.420)

of psychedelics folks that people doing researches

Lex Fridman (26:18.140)

like Rick Doblin in Johns Hopkins,

Vitalik Buterin (26:21.420)

there's a lot of exciting research on psychedelics.

Lex Fridman (26:23.780)

And one thing you could say about operating

Vitalik Buterin (26:26.380)

at the edge of legality,

Lex Fridman (26:28.420)

it could actually accelerate the adoption

Vitalik Buterin (26:32.460)

of particular things like whether it's marijuana

Lex Fridman (26:36.460)

or psychedelics, they can help people out.

Vitalik Buterin (26:39.220)

It's almost accelerates the policy.

Lex Fridman (26:41.460)

It forces the policy to catch up

Vitalik Buterin (26:43.340)

to where the people stand.

Lex Fridman (26:44.820)

So there's a positive way of doing things

Vitalik Buterin (26:47.180)

that are in the gray area of legality

Lex Fridman (26:49.460)

and creating a market that allows people

Vitalik Buterin (26:51.540)

to in a safe way be able to participate

Lex Fridman (26:55.540)

in this gray area of legality.

Vitalik Buterin (26:57.060)

The other thing to keep in mind, of course,

Lex Fridman (26:58.660)

is that the set of like the kinds of things

Vitalik Buterin (27:01.660)

that just like payment processors as companies

Lex Fridman (27:03.940)

try to restrict you from is much larger

Lex Fridman (27:06.700)

than the set of things that's illegal, right?

Lex Fridman (27:08.740)

Like part of that is because they wanna be

Vitalik Buterin (27:10.420)

super conservative and like the more layers you have,

Lex Fridman (27:12.780)

the more they're like conservative

Vitalik Buterin (27:14.700)

because they're scared of what the layer below them

Lex Fridman (27:17.300)

will do to them.

Vitalik Buterin (27:18.940)

Sometimes they have their own moral opinions

Lex Fridman (27:21.540)

of various kinds.

Lex Fridman (27:23.180)

They go after lots of people, right?

Lex Fridman (27:24.460)

Like they make life really hard for sex workers,

Vitalik Buterin (27:27.140)

for example, psychedelics, as you mentioned,

Lex Fridman (27:30.300)

there's a lot of activity,

Vitalik Buterin (27:34.660)

even including stuff that is totally legal

Lex Fridman (27:37.420)

that just there's this like shadow

Vitalik Buterin (27:40.940)

like PayPal credit card governments

Lex Fridman (27:42.700)

or whatever you wanna call it.

Lex Fridman (27:43.740)

And that makes it just hard to participate in this stuff.

Lex Fridman (27:47.980)

So I think like reducing the number of intermediaries

Vitalik Buterin (27:50.380)

is definitely normally a good thing.

Lex Fridman (27:54.740)

All right, let's talk about one of the most exciting

Vitalik Buterin (27:58.060)

technologies like technically, philosophically,

Lex Fridman (28:01.820)

like socially, financially in every way,

Vitalik Buterin (28:05.100)

which is Ethereum 2.0.

Lex Fridman (28:07.660)

There's a million things to talk about,

Lex Fridman (28:10.460)

but step one is probably a good thing to do,

Lex Fridman (28:14.020)

which is can you briefly summarize your vision

Lex Fridman (28:17.620)

how Ethereum 2.0 will make Ethereum more scalable,

Lex Fridman (28:21.020)

secure and sustainable?

Vitalik Buterin (28:23.300)

Sure, so I think recently we've actually been

Lex Fridman (28:27.140)

kind of deemphasizing the ETH 2.0 branding, I guess.

Lex Fridman (28:30.660)

So the reason behind that was that originally

Lex Fridman (28:33.620)

we envisioned something more like a big grand event

Vitalik Buterin (28:37.100)

where all the good things would happen at the same time

Lex Fridman (28:39.900)

and it would be a new blockchain,

Lex Fridman (28:41.860)

and it would be a new protocol

Lex Fridman (28:43.140)

and people would have to take a lot of effort

Vitalik Buterin (28:45.260)

to migrate over.

Lex Fridman (28:46.460)

But later we've slowly changed the roadmap

Lex Fridman (28:50.340)

over to something that's much more incremental, right?

Lex Fridman (28:53.220)

So proof of stake happens kind of over time

Lex Fridman (28:56.060)

and then sharding gets added over time

Lex Fridman (28:57.540)

and all of these features get added over time.

Lex Fridman (28:59.340)

And so the experience for just a regular Ethereum user

Lex Fridman (29:02.660)

still feels very seamless, right?

Vitalik Buterin (29:04.540)

It's like maybe a little bit more complex

Lex Fridman (29:06.700)

than the hard forks that we've already done

Lex Fridman (29:09.420)

from a user's point of view, but not by that much, right?

Lex Fridman (29:13.140)

So the big two things that are happening, right?

Vitalik Buterin (29:17.900)

These are what used to be considered

Lex Fridman (29:19.860)

the two flagship features of ETH 2.0

Lex Fridman (29:21.860)

and now they're just the flagship features

Lex Fridman (29:23.980)

of the next devolution of Ethereum,

Vitalik Buterin (29:27.780)

as proof of stake and sharding.

Lex Fridman (29:31.340)

So proof of stake is a consensus algorithm.

Vitalik Buterin (29:34.180)

It's a, or a consensus mechanism, I should say.

Lex Fridman (29:38.140)

The difference is that like an algorithm

Vitalik Buterin (29:40.380)

is something that you run by yourself.

Lex Fridman (29:41.820)

A mechanism is like interactions between people

Lex Fridman (29:45.500)

and it could even include incentives and all of that.

Lex Fridman (29:48.140)

So a consensus mechanism,

Lex Fridman (29:52.180)

so by which nodes in the network agree on

Lex Fridman (29:56.500)

which blocks came in, which transactions came in,

Lex Fridman (29:58.580)

what order, make sure that once a block gets accepted,

Lex Fridman (2:00:01.520)

like coupling fun with technological sophistication

Lex Fridman (2:00:06.720)

and somehow figuring out a way to do that well.

Lex Fridman (2:00:10.360)

I want the world to be fun.

Vitalik Buterin (2:00:12.400)

I think the world being fun is great.

Lex Fridman (2:00:15.960)

Okay, let me ask about a couple

Vitalik Buterin (2:00:17.840)

of other technologies if it's okay.

Lex Fridman (2:00:19.680)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (2:00:20.520)

What are your thoughts about Chainlink

Lex Fridman (2:00:22.720)

and hybrid smart contracts that utilize

Lex Fridman (2:00:24.800)

off chain external data sources?

Lex Fridman (2:00:28.560)

And I think it's definitely necessary for a smart contract

Lex Fridman (2:00:32.480)

so that do a lot of things to use off chain data

Lex Fridman (2:00:35.920)

of some kind, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:00:36.760)

Like if you want to have a stable coin,

Lex Fridman (2:00:38.520)

you need a price oracle so you know

Lex Fridman (2:00:39.880)

what price you're targeting.

Lex Fridman (2:00:41.440)

If you want to have some fancy no crop insurance gadget,

Vitalik Buterin (2:00:45.560)

like I think EtherRisk has been doing

Lex Fridman (2:00:47.960)

a lot of good work with that.

Lex Fridman (2:00:49.840)

And I think it was either Kenya or Sri Lanka or both,

Lex Fridman (2:00:53.280)

like they're making a lot of good progress

Vitalik Buterin (2:00:56.800)

in some of those places.

Lex Fridman (2:00:59.200)

Like you need some kind of oracle to tell you,

Lex Fridman (2:01:01.840)

did it actually rain in this particular area?

Lex Fridman (2:01:05.200)

If he wants to have like assets that mirror

Vitalik Buterin (2:01:07.280)

other financial assets, you need an oracle.

Lex Fridman (2:01:09.320)

If you want to have a prediction market,

Vitalik Buterin (2:01:10.600)

you need an oracle.

Lex Fridman (2:01:12.040)

And so projects that provide oracles

Vitalik Buterin (2:01:15.480)

are definitely really important.

Lex Fridman (2:01:18.320)

There are definitely different kinds of use cases.

Vitalik Buterin (2:01:20.400)

Like Augur is more about events

Lex Fridman (2:01:22.400)

and the Augur oracle is designed,

Lex Fridman (2:01:24.640)

I think differently from Chainlink, right?

Lex Fridman (2:01:26.120)

Like Chainlink emphasizes the whole,

Vitalik Buterin (2:01:29.160)

we have a fast automated thing

Lex Fridman (2:01:31.640)

that just gives you data quickly.

Vitalik Buterin (2:01:33.760)

Whereas Augur is more, we don't give a crap about speed.

Lex Fridman (2:01:38.200)

And look, we don't need to give a crap about speed

Vitalik Buterin (2:01:40.000)

because if you want to get your money out

Lex Fridman (2:01:41.440)

on a prediction market that where in reality it's resolved,

Vitalik Buterin (2:01:44.320)

you can probably just sell your coins for 99 cents anyway.

Lex Fridman (2:01:48.440)

So I mean, I think Chainlink is definitely

Vitalik Buterin (2:01:52.360)

taking a good and important part of the oracle design space.

Lex Fridman (2:01:58.480)

And I'm definitely happy that there's

Vitalik Buterin (2:02:00.960)

that project taking the task on.

Lex Fridman (2:02:02.720)

I mean, at the same time, I do think that

Vitalik Buterin (2:02:04.840)

their frog army on Twitter can get a bit intense at times,

Lex Fridman (2:02:07.240)

but like.

Vitalik Buterin (2:02:08.080)

I mean, is there a way to incorporate

Lex Fridman (2:02:10.560)

sort of oracle network type of ideas into Ethereum?

Vitalik Buterin (2:02:14.480)

I personally would prefer the Ethereum base layer,

Lex Fridman (2:02:17.920)

like stay away from trying to provide too much functionality

Vitalik Buterin (2:02:21.920)

because like once you have the Ethereum base layer

Lex Fridman (2:02:25.960)

making a claim about like say the US dollar

Vitalik Buterin (2:02:29.560)

to Ethereum price, like at some sense,

Lex Fridman (2:02:33.280)

you're basically saying that like Ethereum

Vitalik Buterin (2:02:35.000)

as a base platform starts making

Lex Fridman (2:02:38.440)

what could be geopolitical statements, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:02:40.560)

Like for example, imagine if there was some civil war

Lex Fridman (2:02:44.400)

and the US split up and you had two currencies

Vitalik Buterin (2:02:46.440)

that both claims to be the US dollar,

Lex Fridman (2:02:47.920)

well, Ethereum would have to pick one

Vitalik Buterin (2:02:50.920)

for the sake of everyone who was already using that oracle.

Lex Fridman (2:02:53.040)

So does that mean that the blockchain would be

Lex Fridman (2:02:56.040)

taking a position in this big mega political debate?

Lex Fridman (2:02:59.400)

So I think like for just those kinds of reasons,

Vitalik Buterin (2:03:03.600)

I would personally like prefer Ethereum itself

Lex Fridman (2:03:08.240)

to be more of this sort of pure platform

Vitalik Buterin (2:03:11.400)

that just analyzes transactions

Lex Fridman (2:03:13.840)

just mathematically using deterministic consensus rules.

Lex Fridman (2:03:17.920)

And then if you need the oracles, that can be layer twos.

Lex Fridman (2:03:20.360)

Like I think Ethereum like benefits

Vitalik Buterin (2:03:23.600)

from not trying to do everything at layer one

Lex Fridman (2:03:26.320)

and having this like very robust layer two ecosystem

Vitalik Buterin (2:03:29.320)

where you have all these projects doing interesting things.

Lex Fridman (2:03:31.400)

Yeah, focus on the basic technology avoid the politics.

Vitalik Buterin (2:03:34.040)

Gotcha.

Lex Fridman (2:03:36.000)

Let me ask a bit of a human question.

Vitalik Buterin (2:03:40.320)

Charles Hoskinson, someone you've worked with

Lex Fridman (2:03:43.800)

in the early days of Ethereum,

Vitalik Buterin (2:03:46.000)

there appears to my outsider view

Lex Fridman (2:03:48.840)

to have been a bit of a falling out.

Vitalik Buterin (2:03:51.080)

Is there positive inspiring human story

Lex Fridman (2:03:54.020)

to be told about why you two parted ways?

Vitalik Buterin (2:03:56.640)

I kind of want to let the various books

Lex Fridman (2:04:01.760)

about Ethereum speak for themselves,

Lex Fridman (2:04:04.280)

but I feel like since that time,

Lex Fridman (2:04:09.240)

I think Charles has clearly progressed

Lex Fridman (2:04:14.720)

and matured in a lot of ways.

Lex Fridman (2:04:16.880)

And people who follow Charles closely

Vitalik Buterin (2:04:19.720)

have definitely told me that like 2021 Charles

Lex Fridman (2:04:22.280)

is very different from a 2014 Charles.

Lex Fridman (2:04:24.080)

And I'm sure it's 2021 Vitalik is much different

Lex Fridman (2:04:26.520)

from 2014 Vitalik as well.

Vitalik Buterin (2:04:28.520)

I'm kind of interested how the 2030 and 2040 Vitalik

Lex Fridman (2:04:32.400)

and Charles look like as well.

Vitalik Buterin (2:04:34.060)

Oh, interesting.

Lex Fridman (2:04:35.360)

Like the progression of the humans.

Vitalik Buterin (2:04:37.400)

Is this going to be one of those things

Lex Fridman (2:04:39.140)

where like everyone comes full circle

Lex Fridman (2:04:40.720)

and then 2030 Vitalik and Charles are best friends?

Lex Fridman (2:04:43.240)

Yeah, not necessarily best friends,

Lex Fridman (2:04:45.600)

but some kind of are able to reminisce

Lex Fridman (2:04:50.600)

in ways that puts some of the tension of the past behind.

Vitalik Buterin (2:04:55.480)

I think such things are possible.

Lex Fridman (2:04:58.400)

I think people definitely absolutely have a right to,

Lex Fridman (2:05:02.840)

and I think should strive to just constantly change

Lex Fridman (2:05:06.200)

and reinvent themselves.

Vitalik Buterin (2:05:08.880)

Is there something you could say about your thoughts

Lex Fridman (2:05:11.080)

about the Cardano project that Charles Hoskinson leads?

Vitalik Buterin (2:05:15.520)

They've worked on some interesting ideas

Lex Fridman (2:05:19.200)

that mirror some of the ideas in Ethereum,

Vitalik Buterin (2:05:22.680)

proof of stake, working on smart contracts

Lex Fridman (2:05:27.680)

and all those kinds of things.

Vitalik Buterin (2:05:28.880)

Is there something, again, positive,

Lex Fridman (2:05:31.440)

inspiring that you could say?

Lex Fridman (2:05:33.160)

Are they a competitor?

Lex Fridman (2:05:34.360)

Is it complimentary technology?

Vitalik Buterin (2:05:37.880)

There's definitely interesting ideas in there.

Lex Fridman (2:05:40.080)

I do think Cardano takes a bit of a different approach

Vitalik Buterin (2:05:43.080)

than Ethereum in that they really emphasize

Lex Fridman (2:05:45.600)

having these big academic proofs for everything,

Vitalik Buterin (2:05:48.800)

whereas Ethereum tends to be more okay with heuristic arguments

Lex Fridman (2:05:53.040)

in part because it's just trying to do more faster.

Lex Fridman (2:05:55.960)

But there's definitely very interesting things

Lex Fridman (2:05:59.680)

that come out of IOHK research.

Lex Fridman (2:06:03.760)

Can you comment on that kind of idea?

Lex Fridman (2:06:05.400)

I, as sort of having a foot in research,

Vitalik Buterin (2:06:08.840)

enjoy Charles's kind of emphasis on papers

Lex Fridman (2:06:12.120)

and deep academic rigor.

Vitalik Buterin (2:06:15.160)

What's the role of deep research rigor

Lex Fridman (2:06:18.760)

in the world of cryptocurrency?

Vitalik Buterin (2:06:20.520)

Interesting.

Lex Fridman (2:06:21.360)

I'm actually the sort of person

Vitalik Buterin (2:06:22.180)

who thinks deep rigor is overrated.

Lex Fridman (2:06:25.160)

The reason why I think deep rigor is overrated

Vitalik Buterin (2:06:27.320)

is because I think in terms of why protocols fail,

Lex Fridman (2:06:32.840)

I think the number of failures that are outside the model

Vitalik Buterin (2:06:37.000)

is even more important, is bigger and more important

Lex Fridman (2:06:39.320)

than the failures that are inside the model.

Lex Fridman (2:06:41.760)

So if you take selfish mining, for example,

Lex Fridman (2:06:43.880)

that original discovery from 2013

Vitalik Buterin (2:06:47.480)

that showed how Bitcoin does,

Lex Fridman (2:06:53.360)

even if it has a 50% fault tolerance,

Vitalik Buterin (2:06:56.200)

assuming everyone's honest,

Lex Fridman (2:06:57.280)

it only has a zero to 33% fault tolerance,

Vitalik Buterin (2:07:01.260)

depending on your network model,

Lex Fridman (2:07:02.800)

if you assume rational actors.

Lex Fridman (2:07:05.180)

And to me, that was a great example

Lex Fridman (2:07:08.520)

of an outside the model failure, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:07:10.200)

Because traditional consensus research,

Lex Fridman (2:07:12.440)

just up until or before the blockchain days,

Lex Fridman (2:07:16.020)

did not think about like incentivization much, right?

Lex Fridman (2:07:19.440)

There was a little bit of thought about incentivization.

Vitalik Buterin (2:07:21.640)

There's like a couple of papers

Lex Fridman (2:07:23.360)

on the Byzantine altruist rational model,

Lex Fridman (2:07:25.220)

but it wasn't that deep.

Lex Fridman (2:07:26.860)

It was mostly operating under the assumption

Vitalik Buterin (2:07:28.840)

that we're gonna make consensus

Lex Fridman (2:07:31.480)

between 15 participants and these are institutions.

Lex Fridman (2:07:34.620)

And if something goes wrong,

Lex Fridman (2:07:36.280)

then we can figure out whether or not

Vitalik Buterin (2:07:38.840)

it was deliberate offline.

Lex Fridman (2:07:40.000)

And if they did something evil, we can sue them.

Lex Fridman (2:07:42.120)

Whereas in the crypto world, you can't sue that, right?

Lex Fridman (2:07:44.400)

And so that whole discovery basically arose

Vitalik Buterin (2:07:47.720)

just because the model of traditional consensus research

Lex Fridman (2:07:52.960)

just didn't cover those possibilities.

Lex Fridman (2:07:54.840)

And then once you go out of the model,

Lex Fridman (2:07:56.600)

those other issues do exist, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:07:59.080)

So, but then at the same time,

Lex Fridman (2:08:01.600)

there definitely are protocols that turn out to be,

Vitalik Buterin (2:08:06.140)

that do have failures inside the model.

Lex Fridman (2:08:08.160)

Like this reminds me of the time

Vitalik Buterin (2:08:09.780)

when I think I found a bug

Lex Fridman (2:08:12.800)

in a proposed consensus implementation

Vitalik Buterin (2:08:16.160)

from either BitShares or EOS.

Lex Fridman (2:08:18.240)

This happened around the end of 2017.

Lex Fridman (2:08:21.160)

So that was definitely inside the model

Lex Fridman (2:08:23.440)

because like they had a very clear idea

Vitalik Buterin (2:08:25.480)

of what they were trying to achieve.

Lex Fridman (2:08:26.400)

They had a very clear description

Lex Fridman (2:08:27.960)

and like there's a very clear mathematical argument

Lex Fridman (2:08:30.840)

for why the description doesn't lead

Vitalik Buterin (2:08:32.080)

to what they're trying to achieve.

Lex Fridman (2:08:33.060)

But ultimately what you're trying to achieve

Lex Fridman (2:08:35.420)

can never be fully described in formal language, right?

Lex Fridman (2:08:38.380)

Like I think this is the big discovery of,

Lex Fridman (2:08:41.480)

the AI safety people, for example, right?

Lex Fridman (2:08:43.480)

Like just having a specification of what you want

Vitalik Buterin (2:08:48.080)

is an insanely hard problem.

Lex Fridman (2:08:49.800)

And like the more powerful the optimizer

Vitalik Buterin (2:08:52.780)

that you're giving the instructions to,

Lex Fridman (2:08:54.240)

the more you have to be careful.

Lex Fridman (2:08:55.800)

And so, I think there are the kind of these two sides.

Lex Fridman (2:09:02.680)

And then the other thing is that

Vitalik Buterin (2:09:05.800)

a lot of the academic approach ends up

Lex Fridman (2:09:09.260)

basically optimizing for other people

Vitalik Buterin (2:09:11.140)

inside of the academic system.

Lex Fridman (2:09:12.960)

And it doesn't really optimize for like curious outsiders.

Vitalik Buterin (2:09:17.840)

Whereas like I personally totally optimize

Lex Fridman (2:09:20.020)

for curious outsiders, or at least I feel like I strive to.

Lex Fridman (2:09:23.200)

So I guess like that's my case for why I like

Lex Fridman (2:09:29.120)

tends to behave in ways that, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (2:09:31.480)

occasionally traditional academic types

Lex Fridman (2:09:33.400)

criticize as being reckless.

Lex Fridman (2:09:35.220)

But I mean, on the other hand, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:09:37.820)

there's definitely real benefits that come from

Vitalik Buterin (2:09:41.680)

like just taking a rigorous approach,

Lex Fridman (2:09:46.400)

especially when, you know, you know what the thing,

Vitalik Buterin (2:09:49.600)

like, you know what the specification is

Lex Fridman (2:09:51.760)

of what you're trying to get.

Lex Fridman (2:09:53.160)

And like, you're trying to kind of improve your ways

Lex Fridman (2:09:56.520)

or provide protocols that actually provide that.

Lex Fridman (2:09:58.760)

And like, you know exactly what you're looking for.

Lex Fridman (2:10:00.840)

I feel like realistically, you probably wants to do

Vitalik Buterin (2:10:04.320)

both kinds of analysis.

Lex Fridman (2:10:06.040)

And like, sometimes you even want to do

Lex Fridman (2:10:07.280)

both kinds of analysis in stages, right?

Lex Fridman (2:10:09.060)

Like you have, you want to do more quick and dirty things

Lex Fridman (2:10:11.760)

and even wants public feedback on the quick and dirty stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:10:14.200)

And then later on you formalize it more

Lex Fridman (2:10:16.200)

and then you get more feedback.

Lex Fridman (2:10:18.660)

Like in general, I guess I feel like the norms of research

Vitalik Buterin (2:10:23.580)

in the future, like the internet has just changed so much.

Lex Fridman (2:10:27.680)

There's no way that it's not going.

Lex Fridman (2:10:29.000)

And you know, it's even changed like collaboration structures

Lex Fridman (2:10:32.720)

and like the patterns in which we work with each other.

Vitalik Buterin (2:10:35.520)

There's no way that the correct structure

Lex Fridman (2:10:38.260)

for collaborative research is the same

Vitalik Buterin (2:10:40.760)

as what it was 15 years ago.

Lex Fridman (2:10:42.120)

But like, what combination of these existing components

Lex Fridman (2:10:46.500)

and of new ideas it is, like that's something

Lex Fridman (2:10:48.680)

that's, you know, totally legitimate

Vitalik Buterin (2:10:50.960)

to kind of fight it out.

Lex Fridman (2:10:52.320)

And I think it's great that there's different ecosystems

Vitalik Buterin (2:10:54.800)

that have different attitudes to things.

Lex Fridman (2:10:56.060)

Like, you know, I think, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (2:10:57.260)

there's a big possibility that, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:10:59.840)

things that the Ethereum,

Vitalik Buterin (2:11:01.160)

ways that the Ethereum ecosystem approaches some problems

Lex Fridman (2:11:03.280)

is totally wrong.

Lex Fridman (2:11:04.100)

And if there's other ecosystems with different principles

Lex Fridman (2:11:06.360)

and they do well, that's something that we can learn from.

Vitalik Buterin (2:11:09.360)

In the spirit of the depth for a search,

Lex Fridman (2:11:11.560)

can you comment on AI safety?

Lex Fridman (2:11:13.320)

And some people are really worried

Lex Fridman (2:11:15.300)

about the existential risks of artificial intelligence.

Vitalik Buterin (2:11:18.440)

Is there something you could say that's hopeful

Lex Fridman (2:11:22.360)

about how we avoid in the same kind of line of reasoning

Vitalik Buterin (2:11:26.720)

about creating formal models versus kind of looking

Lex Fridman (2:11:30.140)

outside the model into what the real world actually is like?

Vitalik Buterin (2:11:33.360)

Is there some lessons from that we can take

Lex Fridman (2:11:36.580)

and map onto the AI safety world

Vitalik Buterin (2:11:39.000)

where the potentials of the technology,

Lex Fridman (2:11:41.540)

whether it's in autonomous weapon systems

Vitalik Buterin (2:11:45.240)

or just the paperclip problem

Lex Fridman (2:11:47.960)

that we can avoid AI destroying the world?

Lex Fridman (2:11:51.840)

So my impression is actually that, like,

Lex Fridman (2:11:54.360)

this is more of a kind of far away impression

Lex Fridman (2:11:56.880)

and it could be wrong, that it might even be

Lex Fridman (2:11:58.540)

that one of the challenges is that AI is not formal enough.

Lex Fridman (2:12:01.480)

Like, because AI is very practitioner oriented, right?

Lex Fridman (2:12:05.860)

Like, it's all about like, hey, I found a couple of hacks

Lex Fridman (2:12:08.600)

and look, I ran them and look,

Lex Fridman (2:12:09.900)

they seem to improve classification accuracy

Vitalik Buterin (2:12:12.160)

from 0.684 to 0.773.

Lex Fridman (2:12:15.960)

So a lot of the time there just isn't actual science behind

Lex Fridman (2:12:20.240)

why this hack works and why this other hack doesn't work.

Lex Fridman (2:12:23.720)

You just sort of like trial and error your way into it.

Lex Fridman (2:12:27.000)

And I could see how that approach works,

Lex Fridman (2:12:30.160)

but at the same time, like,

Vitalik Buterin (2:12:31.280)

that approach is not good for eligibility, for example.

Lex Fridman (2:12:34.440)

Like, it's not good for like understanding

Lex Fridman (2:12:36.240)

what the heck is actually going on,

Lex Fridman (2:12:37.840)

like how these kinds of systems conceivably might fail.

Vitalik Buterin (2:12:42.000)

Like, there's even, you know, a debate on like,

Lex Fridman (2:12:45.940)

can you take GPT3 like things and just scale them up

Lex Fridman (2:12:49.200)

and their intelligence will continue to improve

Lex Fridman (2:12:51.360)

or is there just like some types of reasoning

Vitalik Buterin (2:12:53.680)

that they're fundamentally bad at

Lex Fridman (2:12:54.960)

and like they're not gonna get good at it

Vitalik Buterin (2:12:57.400)

no matter how much you like scale this exact same approach

Lex Fridman (2:12:59.760)

and add more hardware to it.

Lex Fridman (2:13:01.200)

So having like thinking about what's going on

Lex Fridman (2:13:06.560)

more explicitly, I mean, my understanding

Vitalik Buterin (2:13:08.160)

is that a big part of AI safety research

Lex Fridman (2:13:10.520)

is trying to do that sort of stuff, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:13:13.840)

Formalize.

Lex Fridman (2:13:14.840)

Yeah, formalize, try to improve just AI eligibility,

Vitalik Buterin (2:13:19.200)

like trying to understand, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:13:21.140)

if the AI makes some classification

Lex Fridman (2:13:23.040)

so we can actually see like what happens

Lex Fridman (2:13:25.520)

and like what's going on in the middle, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:13:27.840)

Whereas with crypto or with traditional cryptography,

Lex Fridman (2:13:30.880)

you know, it's like very much not,

Vitalik Buterin (2:13:33.140)

well, okay, I mean, I shouldn't quite say that.

Lex Fridman (2:13:35.240)

It's, traditional cryptography is this interesting mix

Vitalik Buterin (2:13:37.900)

of being very formal and being very informal

Lex Fridman (2:13:40.200)

because it's very formal with,

Vitalik Buterin (2:13:43.100)

given these security assumptions,

Lex Fridman (2:13:44.760)

prove that the protocol works

Vitalik Buterin (2:13:46.000)

under these security assumptions.

Lex Fridman (2:13:47.480)

The places where it's very informal is like,

Vitalik Buterin (2:13:49.400)

well, how do we even know that there isn't

Lex Fridman (2:13:51.280)

an efficient algorithm for factoring numbers?

Vitalik Buterin (2:13:53.480)

Yeah, we kind of tried it for 40 years.

Lex Fridman (2:13:56.000)

And then, you know, so far,

Vitalik Buterin (2:13:57.360)

no one's found anything better

Lex Fridman (2:13:58.600)

than the general number field sieve.

Lex Fridman (2:14:00.840)

And like, okay, fine, we'll just assume it's fine.

Lex Fridman (2:14:03.280)

You know, how do we know you can't find the discrete log

Lex Fridman (2:14:07.120)

between two elliptic curve points?

Lex Fridman (2:14:08.520)

Like, nope, did it a couple of decades,

Vitalik Buterin (2:14:11.040)

no one's found anything faster

Lex Fridman (2:14:13.360)

than like baby step, giant step stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:14:15.760)

So that's,

Lex Fridman (2:14:18.120)

and like, there's definitely ways

Lex Fridman (2:14:24.080)

in which that approach really makes sense, right?

Lex Fridman (2:14:25.960)

Because at least you can concentrate your analysis

Vitalik Buterin (2:14:28.800)

on a small number of building blocks.

Lex Fridman (2:14:30.820)

And like, you know, you do have some intuitive reasoning

Vitalik Buterin (2:14:33.000)

about those building blocks,

Lex Fridman (2:14:33.940)

but like at least there is a small number

Vitalik Buterin (2:14:35.680)

of building blocks and lots of people are looking at them.

Lex Fridman (2:14:38.000)

And then everything else just sort of gets formally built

Vitalik Buterin (2:14:40.400)

on top and you actually can like mathematically reduce

Lex Fridman (2:14:43.040)

the security of big things to building blocks, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:14:45.640)

Like you can have mathematical proofs

Lex Fridman (2:14:47.800)

that say, you know, if you make a ZK Synarch

Vitalik Buterin (2:14:51.120)

of a yes statement when in reality that statement is false,

Lex Fridman (2:14:54.460)

then you can use that to like extract information

Vitalik Buterin (2:14:59.320)

out of elliptic curves that, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:15:00.760)

it completely breaks the problem or something like that.

Vitalik Buterin (2:15:03.760)

So.

Lex Fridman (2:15:04.600)

So ZK Synarch is an example where formalism is beneficial.

Vitalik Buterin (2:15:08.520)

Absolutely, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:15:09.360)

And so maybe you can have the same kind of stuff

Vitalik Buterin (2:15:11.320)

in the AI safety within AI systems

Lex Fridman (2:15:14.520)

that you can get a hold of some kind of aspect

Vitalik Buterin (2:15:18.740)

of the systems that you can control provably.

Lex Fridman (2:15:21.320)

And then in blockchains and cryptocurrency,

Vitalik Buterin (2:15:24.080)

I think the one area where consensus mechanisms

Lex Fridman (2:15:27.360)

is still more an art than a science

Vitalik Buterin (2:15:29.000)

is that these aren't just like technological systems,

Lex Fridman (2:15:32.060)

they're crypto economic systems, right?

Lex Fridman (2:15:33.560)

And they make assumptions about people.

Lex Fridman (2:15:35.400)

And which assumptions you can make about people

Vitalik Buterin (2:15:37.760)

is not something that you can prove with math.

Lex Fridman (2:15:39.540)

Right, even just the basic 51%.

Vitalik Buterin (2:15:43.400)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (2:15:44.240)

Honest.

Lex Fridman (2:15:45.160)

Can you trust the 51%?

Lex Fridman (2:15:47.360)

If you can't trust the 51%,

Lex Fridman (2:15:49.200)

can you trust the other 49% to be able to coordinate

Lex Fridman (2:15:53.400)

on like making their own fork?

Lex Fridman (2:15:55.080)

What will happen to coin prices?

Lex Fridman (2:15:56.560)

Like how do people as human beings react to these events?

Vitalik Buterin (2:16:00.000)

Like there's all of these assumptions.

Lex Fridman (2:16:02.320)

But no, at the same time,

Vitalik Buterin (2:16:03.720)

look, if you can write down the assumptions,

Lex Fridman (2:16:05.640)

then you can like do formal things with them.

Vitalik Buterin (2:16:08.480)

I almost forgot to ask you

Lex Fridman (2:16:10.400)

about one of the most exciting aspects of Ethereum.

Vitalik Buterin (2:16:13.280)

I mean, it's non technical.

Lex Fridman (2:16:14.520)

I think it's a societal, it's social, which is NFTs.

Lex Fridman (2:16:19.960)

So what do you think about the explosion of NFTs

Lex Fridman (2:16:24.600)

in the recent months, especially in the art world

Lex Fridman (2:16:28.840)

and beyond, and what does the future look like?

Lex Fridman (2:16:31.600)

So this is maybe the social impact on the world,

Vitalik Buterin (2:16:35.800)

on the individual creators of all kinds.

Lex Fridman (2:16:38.760)

Like is that something you've actually expected to see,

Lex Fridman (2:16:42.440)

NFTs having this kind of impact?

Lex Fridman (2:16:44.680)

And beyond, what do you think will happen

Vitalik Buterin (2:16:48.120)

in the digital space with NFTs,

Lex Fridman (2:16:51.720)

in virtual reality, in gaming, all those kinds of things?

Vitalik Buterin (2:16:55.520)

I was definitely surprised by like NFTs in particular.

Lex Fridman (2:16:58.920)

Like I even actually think might be on record somewhere

Vitalik Buterin (2:17:02.240)

on some tech conference panel.

Lex Fridman (2:17:03.680)

Like they were asking, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (2:17:05.200)

it was one of those overrated or underrated sections

Lex Fridman (2:17:07.480)

and ask about NFTs and I thought,

Lex Fridman (2:17:09.240)

and I said like, hey, I think NFTs are overrated.

Lex Fridman (2:17:11.800)

And, you know, in retrospect,

Vitalik Buterin (2:17:12.880)

that turned out to be quite wrong.

Lex Fridman (2:17:14.600)

I think, like, I guess I just personally

Vitalik Buterin (2:17:17.560)

can't really relate to this concept

Lex Fridman (2:17:19.960)

of like spending a lot of money on a thing.

Vitalik Buterin (2:17:22.240)

Like there's nothing, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:17:24.680)

there's no clear kind of understanding

Vitalik Buterin (2:17:27.360)

of why that thing would maintain its value.

Lex Fridman (2:17:32.000)

Uniqueness of a thing having value.

Vitalik Buterin (2:17:34.640)

Right, exactly.

Lex Fridman (2:17:36.200)

That's like, I definitely like cannot really understand,

Vitalik Buterin (2:17:39.960)

you know, the psychology behind like buying,

Lex Fridman (2:17:42.000)

you know, paying $200,000 for original art painting.

Vitalik Buterin (2:17:44.480)

I'd be like, you know, if I had a mansion,

Lex Fridman (2:17:46.400)

just like give me photocopies of everything.

Vitalik Buterin (2:17:48.520)

You can hang three photocopies of the Mona Lisa section.

Lex Fridman (2:17:52.200)

Why would I even have the Mona Lisa?

Vitalik Buterin (2:17:53.360)

I think I'd probably just like have some Nyan Cats

Lex Fridman (2:17:55.320)

or something.

Vitalik Buterin (2:17:56.160)

That's one thing where mathematics

Lex Fridman (2:17:57.680)

or theoretical computer science cannot formalize

Lex Fridman (2:18:00.000)

why the heck NFTs are valuable.

Lex Fridman (2:18:01.680)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (2:18:02.520)

But the thing that makes me very happy about the space

Lex Fridman (2:18:07.200)

now that it has happened is that,

Lex Fridman (2:18:09.600)

and this gets back to the conversation

Lex Fridman (2:18:11.680)

that we had at the beginning, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:18:12.760)

Like I'm interested in this concept

Lex Fridman (2:18:14.440)

of decentralized public goods funding, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:18:17.360)

Like I want things that are good and valuable

Lex Fridman (2:18:20.800)

to as much as possible also be things

Vitalik Buterin (2:18:23.720)

that can economically sustain the people

Lex Fridman (2:18:25.920)

who produce them, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:18:26.960)

Because if you don't have that,

Lex Fridman (2:18:29.000)

then either the public goods just don't get produced at all

Vitalik Buterin (2:18:32.000)

or people make like centralized versions

Lex Fridman (2:18:34.560)

that have some of the properties and try to be substitutes,

Lex Fridman (2:18:37.040)

but actually just like concentrate control

Lex Fridman (2:18:39.280)

in a very small group, right?

Lex Fridman (2:18:41.040)

And both of those things are not very nice.

Lex Fridman (2:18:43.480)

So the nice thing about NFTs would be,

Vitalik Buterin (2:18:46.240)

well, if you're an artist and you can just mint NFTs

Lex Fridman (2:18:49.560)

and this is a source of revenue,

Vitalik Buterin (2:18:50.640)

then like great, that's another stream of revenue

Lex Fridman (2:18:52.720)

for creative work that often does still get underfunded

Lex Fridman (2:18:57.000)

and that's amazing.

Lex Fridman (2:18:58.160)

Okay, let me ask you a weird question.

Vitalik Buterin (2:18:59.480)

We talked about Craig Wright a little bit,

Lex Fridman (2:19:01.320)

but a lot of people write to me, one of two emails.

Vitalik Buterin (2:19:06.320)

One email is calling any coin outside of Bitcoin a scam

Lex Fridman (2:19:15.120)

and then the other email is saying,

Vitalik Buterin (2:19:17.760)

my favorite coin is the best coin,

Lex Fridman (2:19:21.160)

it's going to save the world, whatever that coin is.

Lex Fridman (2:19:25.560)

And so I sit back and I look, I have no idea.

Lex Fridman (2:19:28.720)

I try to figure out like the humans that I trust

Vitalik Buterin (2:19:33.240)

in this space, just the basic human qualities,

Lex Fridman (2:19:38.120)

but do you think some coins are scams?

Lex Fridman (2:19:43.160)

Do you think some coins, maybe another way to ask it,

Lex Fridman (2:19:46.040)

are scamier than other coins?

Lex Fridman (2:19:48.680)

How are people that are looking outside of this space

Lex Fridman (2:19:51.320)

where there's all of these cryptocurrencies

Vitalik Buterin (2:19:53.640)

supposed to figure out what is a scam and not,

Lex Fridman (2:19:57.520)

or how to use the right kind of language

Lex Fridman (2:19:59.440)

when talking about them?

Lex Fridman (2:20:01.200)

Because there's the harshness of the language

Vitalik Buterin (2:20:03.200)

from the Bitcoin maximalists that doesn't just say

Lex Fridman (2:20:06.160)

everything's a scam, including Ethereum,

Lex Fridman (2:20:09.500)

but they use terms like shit coin

Lex Fridman (2:20:11.560)

that says it's not only a scam, it's like a waste of time.

Vitalik Buterin (2:20:14.160)

I mean, every word you can use, they say that.

Lex Fridman (2:20:17.080)

That's very harsh.

Lex Fridman (2:20:18.400)

And then some people just apply the word scam

Lex Fridman (2:20:22.040)

much, much more conservatively and just refer to coins

Vitalik Buterin (2:20:26.740)

that legitimately are trying to scam people

Lex Fridman (2:20:29.200)

out of their money as scams.

Lex Fridman (2:20:31.440)

So what do we do with this word scam?

Lex Fridman (2:20:33.120)

Should it ever be applied to coins?

Lex Fridman (2:20:35.440)

And is it a binary thing or is it a gray area?

Lex Fridman (2:20:41.040)

I think it's definitely a gray area.

Vitalik Buterin (2:20:42.840)

There's definitely things that are really and actually scams.

Lex Fridman (2:20:46.280)

I mean, Bitconnect would be one example

Vitalik Buterin (2:20:48.240)

of something that's way on the scam spectrum.

Lex Fridman (2:20:51.640)

Did you see their 2017 promotional video, by the way?

Lex Fridman (2:20:54.880)

Of Bitconnect?

Lex Fridman (2:20:55.720)

Yeah, hey, hey, hey, what's up, what's up, what's up?

Vitalik Buterin (2:20:59.040)

Bitconnect!

Lex Fridman (2:21:01.520)

It was this three minute, 48 second video

Vitalik Buterin (2:21:03.760)

that was just of this guy making this totally crazy rant.

Lex Fridman (2:21:07.800)

And it was at some conference in Vietnam

Vitalik Buterin (2:21:10.720)

where they were, of course, trying to convince

Lex Fridman (2:21:12.920)

a whole bunch of people to buy this coin

Lex Fridman (2:21:14.560)

and they had these claims about how it would go up in value.

Lex Fridman (2:21:17.680)

That was definitely the peak of these pure,

Vitalik Buterin (2:21:23.080)

completely scammy coins.

Lex Fridman (2:21:24.520)

And that was definitely really terrible.

Lex Fridman (2:21:27.640)

And I feel like we have less,

Lex Fridman (2:21:29.640)

despite cryptocurrency as a whole being bigger,

Vitalik Buterin (2:21:31.640)

we actually have quite a bit less of that now.

Lex Fridman (2:21:34.880)

But then, of course, there's this spectrum

Vitalik Buterin (2:21:37.820)

of things that are not completely scams

Lex Fridman (2:21:40.200)

and then things that are not scams

Lex Fridman (2:21:42.520)

and that are technically totally fine projects

Lex Fridman (2:21:44.440)

but where their community is just incredibly sketchy

Lex Fridman (2:21:48.520)

and then all the way to things

Lex Fridman (2:21:50.560)

that are where the community is nice

Lex Fridman (2:21:52.440)

but maybe the project is just fundamentally incapable

Lex Fridman (2:21:55.360)

of achieving what it's trying to do

Vitalik Buterin (2:21:56.640)

or in the community doesn't realize

Lex Fridman (2:21:57.960)

and then really good projects, right?

Lex Fridman (2:22:00.160)

So if you wanna go a step,

Lex Fridman (2:22:04.200)

like if that's 100% scam,

Lex Fridman (2:22:06.800)

then what would I call say 80% scam?

Lex Fridman (2:22:09.600)

Well, like Bitcoin SV is one example.

Vitalik Buterin (2:22:11.240)

This is a Craig Wright's fork of Bitcoin.

Lex Fridman (2:22:13.640)

Theoretically, it's a blockchain, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:22:15.600)

It's a fork of Bitcoin.

Lex Fridman (2:22:17.000)

It has some 512 megabyte blocks.

Vitalik Buterin (2:22:20.200)

If you really wanted to, you could use the blockchain.

Lex Fridman (2:22:23.360)

It satisfies the property

Lex Fridman (2:22:24.600)

so that you can send transactions onto it.

Lex Fridman (2:22:27.280)

You can probably use it as a backup

Vitalik Buterin (2:22:30.760)

to store your files if you really wanted to

Lex Fridman (2:22:32.840)

just because it has so much space.

Vitalik Buterin (2:22:35.840)

It might fail, but at the same time,

Lex Fridman (2:22:42.680)

as we basically said, Craig Wright is a scammer

Lex Fridman (2:22:46.480)

and half the community is just totally batshit insane.

Lex Fridman (2:22:49.640)

So the humans of a particular cryptocurrency

Vitalik Buterin (2:22:53.280)

is what makes for a scam and not like the humans at the top

Lex Fridman (2:22:56.360)

that have a voice guiding the community.

Vitalik Buterin (2:22:58.960)

Yeah, I think in the case of BSV,

Lex Fridman (2:23:01.720)

the humans, they make just completely wrong

Lex Fridman (2:23:04.840)

and just obviously wrong claims

Lex Fridman (2:23:07.680)

about what BSV is capable of accomplishing

Lex Fridman (2:23:10.200)

and what it can say we could accomplish.

Lex Fridman (2:23:12.640)

And there's just a lot of aspects of it

Vitalik Buterin (2:23:15.320)

that make it feel like a money grab.

Lex Fridman (2:23:17.160)

So that's one example.

Lex Fridman (2:23:18.400)

And then you gotta go a bit further

Lex Fridman (2:23:20.840)

and then you have the trons of the world.

Lex Fridman (2:23:23.440)

And that's a platform, you can use it,

Lex Fridman (2:23:26.160)

you can do stuff on it.

Lex Fridman (2:23:27.960)

But at the same time, they did plagiarize the IPFS white paper

Lex Fridman (2:23:32.480)

and then they...

Lex Fridman (2:23:34.560)

So there's scammy qualities.

Lex Fridman (2:23:36.600)

See, the thing that throws me off a lot,

Vitalik Buterin (2:23:38.560)

it's very difficult for me, is that most coins,

Lex Fridman (2:23:43.920)

but the ones that make me feel like are scammy

Vitalik Buterin (2:23:47.600)

have a large community of people

Lex Fridman (2:23:49.520)

that are super positive about it.

Vitalik Buterin (2:23:53.160)

Like, and they'll write to me.

Lex Fridman (2:23:56.320)

Now that said, sort of on the flip side of that,

Vitalik Buterin (2:24:00.480)

Bitcoin people are also very positive.

Lex Fridman (2:24:04.160)

There's some sense in...

Vitalik Buterin (2:24:05.360)

The reason I was having like squinty eyes

Lex Fridman (2:24:09.480)

looking at Bitcoin for quite a while

Lex Fridman (2:24:12.600)

is like, why is everyone so positive?

Lex Fridman (2:24:14.760)

I was getting total cult vibes.

Vitalik Buterin (2:24:18.000)

Like the ideas are not grounded in truth,

Lex Fridman (2:24:22.400)

but are grounded in an obsession

Vitalik Buterin (2:24:25.640)

of like when you can artificially conjure up a truth,

Lex Fridman (2:24:29.000)

which is why I was a little bit like worried about Bitcoin.

Vitalik Buterin (2:24:31.680)

I think I've learned a lot since then

Lex Fridman (2:24:33.280)

to where like, I learned to separate the community

Vitalik Buterin (2:24:38.560)

from the ideas.

Lex Fridman (2:24:39.880)

And I think Bitcoin is a revolutionary idea on many fronts,

Lex Fridman (2:24:43.920)

but still a community that's like dogmatically excited

Lex Fridman (2:24:48.080)

about something, whatever that is, makes me skeptical.

Vitalik Buterin (2:24:51.240)

Maybe it's just like my upbringing,

Lex Fridman (2:24:53.680)

but when everybody's really excited about something,

Vitalik Buterin (2:24:56.960)

it makes me skeptical.

Lex Fridman (2:25:02.120)

But it also makes me difficult to decide

Lex Fridman (2:25:03.800)

what is this scam or not,

Lex Fridman (2:25:04.760)

because some of the most exciting ideas in this world

Lex Fridman (2:25:07.320)

have a community of people who are excited about it, right?

Lex Fridman (2:25:09.680)

Because it's, I don't know.

Vitalik Buterin (2:25:12.360)

I think space exploration is super exciting.

Lex Fridman (2:25:14.840)

And there's people, I know a lot of them

Vitalik Buterin (2:25:17.960)

that are exceptionally excited about space exploration.

Lex Fridman (2:25:21.400)

Does that mean it's a scam?

Vitalik Buterin (2:25:23.360)

No.

Lex Fridman (2:25:24.840)

So I don't know what to do with that.

Lex Fridman (2:25:26.200)

And so most I just try to stay away, I suppose,

Lex Fridman (2:25:28.680)

but it's unfortunate because I'm sure there's a lot

Vitalik Buterin (2:25:31.320)

of exciting technologies in that space.

Lex Fridman (2:25:33.720)

Like in the case of Bitcoin,

Vitalik Buterin (2:25:34.760)

like I would definitely not call Bitcoin a scam.

Lex Fridman (2:25:36.800)

Right.

Lex Fridman (2:25:37.640)

But I would also not call Litecoin a scam.

Lex Fridman (2:25:43.360)

There's people who call Litecoin a scam

Vitalik Buterin (2:25:45.200)

because they just like say, oh, look,

Lex Fridman (2:25:47.520)

it has no fundamental use case.

Lex Fridman (2:25:49.360)

And the concept of being silver to Bitcoin's gold

Lex Fridman (2:25:52.840)

is just like stupid.

Lex Fridman (2:25:53.960)

And like milli Bitcoin is the silver to Bitcoin's gold.

Lex Fridman (2:25:58.240)

But at the same time, like if you have these people

Vitalik Buterin (2:26:03.120)

who just, they do seem to earnestly believe this.

Lex Fridman (2:26:06.640)

And like they're trying to just like make Litecoin

Vitalik Buterin (2:26:09.680)

be a Litecoin as best as they can.

Lex Fridman (2:26:11.480)

Then like, to me that's enough for it to not be a scam.

Lex Fridman (2:26:17.920)

And then, so yeah, I think the biggest gray area

Lex Fridman (2:26:21.440)

is definitely between like projects that are earnest

Lex Fridman (2:26:27.920)

but they have just all sorts of these

Lex Fridman (2:26:30.520)

like different combinations of flawed qualities to them.

Vitalik Buterin (2:26:34.400)

I mean, the ones that legitimately is a scam

Lex Fridman (2:26:36.760)

is when the key people that are at the head of the project

Vitalik Buterin (2:26:40.000)

are intentionally lying.

Lex Fridman (2:26:42.440)

And I think as long as the intent

Vitalik Buterin (2:26:45.920)

is to try to do good in the world,

Lex Fridman (2:26:48.160)

even if your actual implementation of that is flawed,

Vitalik Buterin (2:26:51.800)

I think that's not a scam.

Lex Fridman (2:26:53.520)

It could be flawed ideas, it could be wrong ideas,

Lex Fridman (2:26:55.680)

but it's not a scam.

Lex Fridman (2:26:58.000)

I'm learning to navigate this space.

Vitalik Buterin (2:27:00.560)

Yeah, it's definitely a very challenging space

Lex Fridman (2:27:03.960)

to navigate, I mean, it's in some ways

Vitalik Buterin (2:27:07.840)

the reflection of the world at large.

Lex Fridman (2:27:10.240)

Yeah, and as we've said, maybe offline

Vitalik Buterin (2:27:13.040)

that the fact that money is involved

Lex Fridman (2:27:15.200)

makes it a little bit more complicated

Vitalik Buterin (2:27:17.480)

that lives can be ruined by the choice of technologies

Lex Fridman (2:27:24.840)

that are taken on.

Lex Fridman (2:27:25.680)

So it makes it more real, more painful,

Lex Fridman (2:27:28.920)

more like elevated the impact of this.

Vitalik Buterin (2:27:31.720)

Like imagine like Mac versus PC wars

Lex Fridman (2:27:35.160)

if everyone who bought a MacBook had 10 Apple shares

Vitalik Buterin (2:27:38.520)

inside of it, and everyone who had a PC

Lex Fridman (2:27:40.200)

had 10 Microsoft shares inside of it.

Lex Fridman (2:27:42.360)

And then you had the elites who bought their Macs

Lex Fridman (2:27:45.960)

back in 1983, and then they spent $500 debt,

Lex Fridman (2:27:48.960)

and now they have $40 million,

Lex Fridman (2:27:50.400)

and they just think that they're these gurus

Vitalik Buterin (2:27:52.720)

who understands the future of finance and geopolitics,

Lex Fridman (2:27:55.360)

and they make theories about why Apple is the one

Vitalik Buterin (2:27:59.080)

that's gonna bring freedom to the world,

Lex Fridman (2:28:00.720)

and Windows is secretly allied with the axis of evil.

Vitalik Buterin (2:28:05.120)

Oh, that's brilliant.

Lex Fridman (2:28:06.120)

So yeah, this is so brilliant.

Lex Fridman (2:28:07.720)

So I think the right way to think about this

Lex Fridman (2:28:09.560)

is we map some of the cryptocurrency battles

Vitalik Buterin (2:28:12.660)

into the space of like EMAX versus VIM,

Lex Fridman (2:28:14.800)

or Apple versus PC, if there were some stock

Vitalik Buterin (2:28:19.340)

that came along with each implementation of each PC,

Lex Fridman (2:28:23.960)

each Mac, that's fascinating.

Vitalik Buterin (2:28:25.640)

This is 100% correct, 100% correct.

Lex Fridman (2:28:28.880)

Because then that really energizes the armies

Vitalik Buterin (2:28:31.160)

of people debating over this in a way

Lex Fridman (2:28:32.640)

that something without money does not.

Vitalik Buterin (2:28:35.580)

Okay, let me ask you about something really fascinating

Lex Fridman (2:28:38.540)

that you are also excited about, which is longevity,

Vitalik Buterin (2:28:42.520)

antiaging.

Lex Fridman (2:28:44.240)

You have donated money to the SENS Foundation,

Lex Fridman (2:28:48.280)

so you have an interest in this whole space

Lex Fridman (2:28:50.800)

of lifespan research.

Lex Fridman (2:28:53.240)

What's your vision here?

Lex Fridman (2:28:54.560)

Or what do you hope to see in antiaging

Lex Fridman (2:28:58.000)

and longevity research?

Lex Fridman (2:28:59.880)

I think I hope to see the concept

Vitalik Buterin (2:29:03.120)

of seeing your parents and grandparents die

Lex Fridman (2:29:06.440)

just slowly disappear from the public consciousness

Vitalik Buterin (2:29:08.940)

as an experience that happens

Lex Fridman (2:29:10.680)

over the course of half a century,

Vitalik Buterin (2:29:12.600)

the same way that getting lost in a city

Lex Fridman (2:29:15.080)

slowly disappeared over the public consciousness

Vitalik Buterin (2:29:16.960)

over the last 50 now that we have smartphones.

Lex Fridman (2:29:19.760)

The thing you have from Nick Bostrom,

Vitalik Buterin (2:29:21.960)

the essay pinned in your Twitter argues

Lex Fridman (2:29:26.840)

that essentially death is almost unethical.

Vitalik Buterin (2:29:33.160)

The fact that we don't do something about this thing that,

Lex Fridman (2:29:36.360)

this, in the essay, is a dragon

Vitalik Buterin (2:29:38.680)

that keeps murdering everybody around us,

Lex Fridman (2:29:43.560)

including our parents and grandparents,

Vitalik Buterin (2:29:46.000)

is, the fact that we don't try to do something aggressively

Lex Fridman (2:29:49.380)

about that dragon doesn't make any sense.

Lex Fridman (2:29:53.360)

So you think this is a battle worth fighting,

Lex Fridman (2:29:58.560)

a battle for immortality, or at least longevity?

Vitalik Buterin (2:30:01.760)

I'd say absolutely.

Lex Fridman (2:30:02.700)

And I'd say a battle where we really have started

Vitalik Buterin (2:30:07.760)

over the last five years in particular

Lex Fridman (2:30:09.560)

to see the first cracks of humanity

Vitalik Buterin (2:30:13.000)

starting to make things that look like

Lex Fridman (2:30:16.080)

they'll turn into victories.

Lex Fridman (2:30:18.600)

Do you think humans can eventually live forever?

Lex Fridman (2:30:22.680)

And maybe as a side comment to that,

Lex Fridman (2:30:26.120)

what technology do you think will enable that

Lex Fridman (2:30:28.000)

as a genetic modification?

Lex Fridman (2:30:29.960)

Is it cloning, is it uploading your mind?

Lex Fridman (2:30:32.440)

Define forever, like are we talking 1,000 years,

Lex Fridman (2:30:34.680)

a million, 10 to the 14, 10 to the 45?

Lex Fridman (2:30:38.480)

Well, let's start, as I tweeted today,

Vitalik Buterin (2:30:40.520)

eventually everything, the universe will be filled

Lex Fridman (2:30:43.040)

with supermassive black holes.

Lex Fridman (2:30:44.740)

So that forever, maybe like backtracking to where.

Lex Fridman (2:30:49.120)

We'll have 10 to the 16 years to figure it out.

Vitalik Buterin (2:30:52.420)

Yes, exactly.

Lex Fridman (2:30:55.360)

Yeah, maybe travel between the multiverse,

Vitalik Buterin (2:30:59.920)

between the different universes of the multiverse.

Lex Fridman (2:31:02.920)

I mean, but forever meaning like, you know, millennia.

Vitalik Buterin (2:31:11.640)

I definitely think that we can get there.

Lex Fridman (2:31:13.920)

I definitely think that it's the sort of thing

Vitalik Buterin (2:31:15.900)

that's going to take an insanely huge amount of work.

Lex Fridman (2:31:19.280)

And I definitely think it's the sort of thing

Vitalik Buterin (2:31:21.240)

where once we figure out the first crop of problems

Lex Fridman (2:31:24.760)

and like people start living to 150,

Vitalik Buterin (2:31:27.640)

we'll just realize that there's like 10 other problems

Lex Fridman (2:31:29.680)

that kill you half as slowly and we'll have to do more work.

Lex Fridman (2:31:32.120)

But the good news is that this is Aubrey's longevity

Lex Fridman (2:31:36.120)

escape velocity argument that if you get everyone

Vitalik Buterin (2:31:38.480)

to live to 150 now, then you have half a century

Lex Fridman (2:31:41.400)

to fix all those other problems as well.

Lex Fridman (2:31:44.320)

So I'm optimistic for that reason.

Lex Fridman (2:31:47.380)

I think you definitely do not want to underestimate

Vitalik Buterin (2:31:52.080)

human ingenuity, especially over the longterm.

Lex Fridman (2:31:54.480)

Like just to look at what happens to computers

Lex Fridman (2:31:56.400)

between the ENIAC in 1950 and we're around 2020, right?

Lex Fridman (2:32:00.000)

Like that's a span of 70 years.

Lex Fridman (2:32:02.720)

So like, you know, both of us, I think,

Lex Fridman (2:32:04.640)

with just present day technology,

Vitalik Buterin (2:32:08.000)

I have like at least 70 more years to live.

Lex Fridman (2:32:11.040)

So just like imagine what kind of sea change

Vitalik Buterin (2:32:12.960)

will happen in biomedicine during that time.

Lex Fridman (2:32:16.080)

And the other thing that made me optimistic

Vitalik Buterin (2:32:17.800)

is that I actually think COVID has been this kind of event

Lex Fridman (2:32:22.480)

that's really kind of pushed biomedicine

Lex Fridman (2:32:26.520)

and especially like activist approaches to biomedicine

Lex Fridman (2:32:29.800)

really into the public consciousness, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:32:32.420)

Like it basically, it's put people into this mindset

Lex Fridman (2:32:36.200)

that, you know, wait, but like, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (2:32:37.840)

it's not just like, you know, the bits and tweets

Lex Fridman (2:32:39.840)

that are gonna save the world, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (2:32:41.880)

the bio is actually like super important and huge.

Lex Fridman (2:32:46.040)

And, you know, ultimately what's ending COVID basically,

Vitalik Buterin (2:32:51.960)

you know, is the vaccines

Lex Fridman (2:32:53.360)

and the vaccines have just been, you know, amazing.

Lex Fridman (2:32:56.160)

And if you can take that energy and also like this,

Lex Fridman (2:33:03.360)

I think philosophical attitude that I've noticed,

Vitalik Buterin (2:33:05.840)

like the way that I would describe

Lex Fridman (2:33:07.580)

the philosophical attitude here,

Vitalik Buterin (2:33:09.960)

this is going more depth first,

Lex Fridman (2:33:12.000)

is that I think the way that I kind of interpret

Vitalik Buterin (2:33:15.840)

part of what I would call late 20th century ideology

Lex Fridman (2:33:19.560)

is that there is this mentality that, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (2:33:21.760)

nature is good and disruptions from nature are bad

Lex Fridman (2:33:25.600)

and generally you wanna minimize disruptions from nature.

Lex Fridman (2:33:28.520)

And like this exists everywhere in the political spectrum.

Lex Fridman (2:33:31.160)

So there's nature as in literal nature.

Lex Fridman (2:33:33.280)

And my view is that like the right wing version of that

Lex Fridman (2:33:35.760)

is markets as nature, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:33:37.380)

Like, you know, the way that like that kind of philosophy

Lex Fridman (2:33:44.020)

talks about, you know, markets

Lex Fridman (2:33:45.940)

and like the goal of not interfering with them,

Lex Fridman (2:33:48.260)

like, you know, it is very kind of like nature styled.

Lex Fridman (2:33:51.380)

And then of course, you know, the conservative one,

Lex Fridman (2:33:53.860)

which is like traditional culture that existed

Vitalik Buterin (2:33:56.940)

before the activists started controlling everything

Lex Fridman (2:33:59.460)

as also being a kind of nature.

Lex Fridman (2:34:01.940)

But the 21st century attitude and like really COVID,

Lex Fridman (2:34:05.260)

you know, has flipped a lot of minds

Vitalik Buterin (2:34:08.620)

because with COVID what's happened is that,

Lex Fridman (2:34:10.820)

well, no, like it's not, nature is not safe, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:34:13.740)

The default is that is like, you know, untold misery

Lex Fridman (2:34:17.340)

and suffering in tens of millions of people dying.

Vitalik Buterin (2:34:19.620)

The only way out for us is through

Lex Fridman (2:34:22.300)

like basically human ingenuity.

Lex Fridman (2:34:25.820)

And that frame of mind is one that's like much more friendly

Lex Fridman (2:34:30.260)

to one, this other change of minds that I want to see,

Vitalik Buterin (2:34:36.260)

which is like basically treating aging

Lex Fridman (2:34:37.740)

as an engineering problem, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:34:39.540)

Like the default is all 7.8 billion human beings

Lex Fridman (2:34:43.300)

that are currently on this earth are gonna die

Lex Fridman (2:34:44.860)

and they're gonna live their last decade of life

Lex Fridman (2:34:47.260)

in debilitating pain.

Lex Fridman (2:34:48.820)

And the only way to stop that is human ingenuity.

Lex Fridman (2:34:51.900)

And, you know, we don't have that solution yet,

Vitalik Buterin (2:34:54.520)

but, you know, if we work hard, we will.

Lex Fridman (2:34:56.620)

And more and more people on the biology side,

Vitalik Buterin (2:34:58.680)

computational biology are basically converting

Lex Fridman (2:35:00.780)

the mess of the human biology into an engineering problem.

Lex Fridman (2:35:05.340)

And once that conversion is happening,

Lex Fridman (2:35:07.380)

looking at the genetic code, the proteins,

Vitalik Buterin (2:35:09.860)

all those kinds of things, once that conversion happens,

Lex Fridman (2:35:12.380)

you can now apply the tools that we know

Lex Fridman (2:35:15.340)

how to solve engineering problems to solving it that way.

Lex Fridman (2:35:18.140)

And then there's also the other version, which is, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:35:21.160)

why do we romanticize this meat vehicle

Lex Fridman (2:35:24.580)

that ultimately is just the thing that carries the brain,

Vitalik Buterin (2:35:28.500)

maybe we can more and more convert ourselves

Lex Fridman (2:35:30.460)

into the digital realm.

Vitalik Buterin (2:35:32.540)

This is where like Neuralink have the computer interfaces

Lex Fridman (2:35:35.660)

and then achieve immortality in the space of information

Lex Fridman (2:35:38.660)

and the digital space versus the biology space.

Lex Fridman (2:35:40.940)

That stuff's interesting too, I agree.

Vitalik Buterin (2:35:42.660)

Again, I think, you know, we have enough resources

Lex Fridman (2:35:45.980)

and we should just try all the parallel tracks.

Vitalik Buterin (2:35:48.060)

You know, it's great that we have people

Lex Fridman (2:35:50.260)

just trying to make our bodies work.

Vitalik Buterin (2:35:51.520)

It's great that we have people trying to upload

Lex Fridman (2:35:54.540)

or improve brain scanning.

Vitalik Buterin (2:35:56.560)

It's also great that we have just like people

Lex Fridman (2:35:58.500)

improving cryonics.

Lex Fridman (2:35:59.500)

So like we could just like, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:36:01.300)

go to sleep in the freezer and eventually,

Vitalik Buterin (2:36:04.140)

hopefully sometime in the future, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:36:06.620)

Hal Finney is gonna be able to wake up,

Vitalik Buterin (2:36:08.740)

all of this, you know, anyone who gets cryo chronically

Lex Fridman (2:36:13.740)

frozen today will be able to wake up,

Lex Fridman (2:36:15.260)

but you know, that's a bet, right?

Lex Fridman (2:36:17.300)

That's the last resort.

Lex Fridman (2:36:18.700)

And then the other interesting thing

Lex Fridman (2:36:20.340)

about the like extreme uploading approach, right,

Vitalik Buterin (2:36:23.980)

is we're excited about space.

Lex Fridman (2:36:27.300)

And one of the points that a lot of science

Vitalik Buterin (2:36:32.620)

or like hard science fiction types make

Lex Fridman (2:36:34.460)

is that, you know, if you want to explore space,

Lex Fridman (2:36:36.000)

that's a lot easier if you're not a human, right?

Lex Fridman (2:36:38.400)

Like one example of this is that, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (2:36:40.820)

in the context of humans, we're talking about like,

Lex Fridman (2:36:42.920)

oh, we're gonna be able to go to the moon,

Vitalik Buterin (2:36:44.340)

oh, we're gonna be able to go to Mars,

Lex Fridman (2:36:46.180)

but there's this project called Starshot, I believe, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:36:49.580)

That's basically trying to send spacecraft

Lex Fridman (2:36:52.900)

to mini spacecrafts to Alpha Centauri,

Lex Fridman (2:36:55.220)

and they literally believe that they're going to be able

Lex Fridman (2:36:58.180)

to get spacecraft over to Alpha Centauri

Vitalik Buterin (2:37:00.020)

like four light years away by like the 2060s.

Lex Fridman (2:37:03.440)

Now, I mean.

Vitalik Buterin (2:37:04.280)

By traveling close to the speed of light, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:37:05.540)

Exactly, like, so the way it works is, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (2:37:08.260)

you have these light sails,

Lex Fridman (2:37:09.300)

like you basically take these a spacecraft

Lex Fridman (2:37:10.980)

and you shine a laser at it,

Lex Fridman (2:37:12.380)

and the laser is insanely strong,

Vitalik Buterin (2:37:13.940)

quickly accelerated at a hundred Gs or,

Lex Fridman (2:37:17.060)

no, I think it was 10,000 Gs

Vitalik Buterin (2:37:18.780)

until it gets to 20% of the speed of light,

Lex Fridman (2:37:20.900)

and then, you know, it goes on your merry way, right?

Lex Fridman (2:37:22.940)

So if you wants to be in,

Lex Fridman (2:37:27.340)

like personally explore the Alpha Centauri system

Vitalik Buterin (2:37:30.100)

within like two centuries or one century,

Lex Fridman (2:37:33.600)

then, you know, being a robot is like,

Vitalik Buterin (2:37:37.520)

by far the most practical way to do it,

Lex Fridman (2:37:39.380)

because there's no way that a human being

Vitalik Buterin (2:37:40.820)

can survive 10,000 Gs.

Lex Fridman (2:37:42.480)

So it's definitely interesting longterm,

Lex Fridman (2:37:45.220)

but at the same time,

Lex Fridman (2:37:47.260)

there's definitely a lot of like psychological hangups

Lex Fridman (2:37:50.060)

and a lot of like deep philosophy

Lex Fridman (2:37:52.100)

that we'll just have to grapple with to get there.

Vitalik Buterin (2:37:55.660)

I think what it hangs on the topic

Lex Fridman (2:37:57.940)

of whether we can convert consciousness

Vitalik Buterin (2:37:59.900)

into an engineering problem.

Lex Fridman (2:38:01.420)

So like, is consciousness tied to our biology?

Vitalik Buterin (2:38:05.180)

Because the moment we can convert consciousness

Lex Fridman (2:38:07.740)

into a digital form,

Vitalik Buterin (2:38:09.100)

then we can send it with that light sail

Lex Fridman (2:38:11.860)

to Alpha Centauri.

Vitalik Buterin (2:38:12.820)

Until then, a robot is not carrying anything

Lex Fridman (2:38:16.380)

except maybe some basic knowledge like Wikipedia.

Vitalik Buterin (2:38:18.580)

It's not carrying the flame of human consciousness.

Lex Fridman (2:38:21.620)

I have high hopes for converting consciousness

Vitalik Buterin (2:38:25.580)

into an engineering problem.

Lex Fridman (2:38:27.460)

In fact, I think it's not as difficult as people think.

Vitalik Buterin (2:38:30.180)

I'm like, yeah, I agree with that.

Lex Fridman (2:38:31.540)

I'm definitely in the camp that consciousness

Vitalik Buterin (2:38:33.900)

is a property of the algorithm

Lex Fridman (2:38:35.900)

and not a property of a brain structure.

Vitalik Buterin (2:38:38.660)

The other fun, like the kinds of philosophical things

Lex Fridman (2:38:41.500)

we'd have to grapple with is like,

Vitalik Buterin (2:38:43.700)

once you upload yourself, like you can hit Control C,

Lex Fridman (2:38:46.140)

you know, like it wouldn't be lovely

Vitalik Buterin (2:38:48.500)

to have like 10 copies of Alex Friedman

Lex Fridman (2:38:50.740)

and then like we could just interview everyone.

Lex Fridman (2:38:53.380)

So this is, I mean, this is, I have to ask this question.

Lex Fridman (2:38:56.180)

It's a difficult one,

Vitalik Buterin (2:38:57.380)

which I don't think it'd be wonderful, first of all.

Lex Fridman (2:39:01.660)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (2:39:02.500)

So in the following way,

Lex Fridman (2:39:04.300)

and this has to do with immortality as well,

Vitalik Buterin (2:39:06.340)

there's something about scarcity that creates value.

Lex Fridman (2:39:11.460)

Or there's a bunch of philosophers,

Vitalik Buterin (2:39:13.340)

Viktor Frankl, Bernard Williams, Ernest Becker,

Lex Fridman (2:39:16.260)

they argue that death or the scarcity of life

Vitalik Buterin (2:39:20.140)

creates meaning.

Lex Fridman (2:39:21.380)

The reason we, life is beautiful,

Vitalik Buterin (2:39:24.420)

the reason so many moments of experience

Lex Fridman (2:39:27.660)

of love or delicious food,

Vitalik Buterin (2:39:31.620)

all those things are made delicious

Lex Fridman (2:39:34.460)

because they're finite, because they end,

Lex Fridman (2:39:36.900)

and because we don't have that many of them.

Lex Fridman (2:39:39.620)

And there's a kind of worry

Vitalik Buterin (2:39:40.940)

that if we extend the human lifespan,

Lex Fridman (2:39:43.780)

if we achieve immortality, or if we, God forbid,

Vitalik Buterin (2:39:46.900)

clone me multiple times,

Lex Fridman (2:39:51.380)

then you lose the richness of what it means

Vitalik Buterin (2:39:53.940)

to have this life, to have this experience.

Lex Fridman (2:39:56.980)

Is that worry you at all?

Lex Fridman (2:39:58.420)

Do you think there's some aspect

Lex Fridman (2:39:59.780)

to which death does in fact give meaning to life?

Vitalik Buterin (2:40:02.780)

I guess like the one historical parallel,

Lex Fridman (2:40:05.460)

and this might be a bit unfair,

Vitalik Buterin (2:40:06.900)

is that there have been philosophers

Lex Fridman (2:40:09.060)

that have said things like,

Vitalik Buterin (2:40:11.340)

war gives meaning to human collectives,

Lex Fridman (2:40:14.500)

and the struggle for supremacy between nations and races

Vitalik Buterin (2:40:18.860)

is this big driver of progress

Lex Fridman (2:40:21.060)

that ensures that everyone strives to be their best.

Lex Fridman (2:40:25.220)

And of course, this viewpoint got into the head

Lex Fridman (2:40:28.900)

of a crazy Austrian guy, and 20 years later,

Vitalik Buterin (2:40:30.940)

his soldiers were shooting at my grandparents.

Lex Fridman (2:40:33.260)

So these days we don't really have that,

Lex Fridman (2:40:36.900)

but yet life still feels meaningful.

Lex Fridman (2:40:39.500)

We've still found other ways to,

Vitalik Buterin (2:40:43.900)

there's still a striving for technological progress.

Lex Fridman (2:40:47.220)

There's still a striving for self improvements in general.

Lex Fridman (2:40:52.740)

And it turns out that you don't actually need

Lex Fridman (2:40:55.380)

to have existential conflicts in order to have that.

Vitalik Buterin (2:40:58.780)

Now, maybe you need conflict,

Lex Fridman (2:40:59.940)

but we have other kinds of conflict, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:41:01.300)

Like we have competition between businesses,

Lex Fridman (2:41:03.700)

competition between political ideologies,

Vitalik Buterin (2:41:05.460)

competition between projects.

Lex Fridman (2:41:07.580)

And so these are, like whatever the psychological needs are,

Vitalik Buterin (2:41:12.620)

like they're just our substitutes for it.

Lex Fridman (2:41:14.500)

So I guess like, yeah, so if we trying to say,

Vitalik Buterin (2:41:19.380)

I feel like once we start living to the age of 200,

Lex Fridman (2:41:24.660)

then like, I'm just intuitively expecting

Vitalik Buterin (2:41:27.220)

that we'll see substitutes emerge in the same way.

Lex Fridman (2:41:31.700)

Yeah, we'll create conflicts of other sorts

Vitalik Buterin (2:41:35.740)

that lead to less human suffering than wars do.

Lex Fridman (2:41:38.900)

Like we'll just start playing Diablo four, five, six,

Vitalik Buterin (2:41:42.420)

cause you die in video games.

Lex Fridman (2:41:44.180)

So maybe we'll get some of the inkling of scarcity

Vitalik Buterin (2:41:48.460)

through the activities we partake in

Lex Fridman (2:41:50.420)

as opposed to our own body dying.

Vitalik Buterin (2:41:52.380)

I mean, I feel shitty when I, like you can,

Lex Fridman (2:41:55.500)

I remember in Diablo three, you can play in hardcore mode

Vitalik Buterin (2:42:00.340)

where if you die in the game, your character's dead.

Lex Fridman (2:42:03.140)

Maybe we'll get the richness that we currently get from life

Vitalik Buterin (2:42:09.500)

by having like little artificial versions

Lex Fridman (2:42:11.940)

of ourselves that die.

Vitalik Buterin (2:42:12.940)

Interesting enough, as I've just like personally

Lex Fridman (2:42:15.780)

spent more time in this world, I've started realizing

Vitalik Buterin (2:42:18.180)

that there is a concept of like real finiteness

Lex Fridman (2:42:22.020)

that still exists and it might even still be a thing

Vitalik Buterin (2:42:25.060)

that provides meaning that doesn't require anyone

Lex Fridman (2:42:27.020)

to actually die.

Vitalik Buterin (2:42:28.180)

Like for example, like how many people from middle school

Lex Fridman (2:42:32.180)

or even high school are yours?

Lex Fridman (2:42:34.820)

Like do you still talk to regularly?

Lex Fridman (2:42:36.660)

I happen to be close friends with like four or five of them.

Vitalik Buterin (2:42:39.620)

Okay, well, like in my case, the answer is zero

Lex Fridman (2:42:41.500)

for middle school and two for high school.

Lex Fridman (2:42:43.060)

But you're right.

Lex Fridman (2:42:43.900)

Right.

Vitalik Buterin (2:42:44.740)

It dropped close to zero.

Lex Fridman (2:42:45.580)

Exactly, it dropped a lot, right?

Lex Fridman (2:42:47.100)

And so like there's a lot of these just like relationships

Lex Fridman (2:42:50.540)

that end up being very finite.

Vitalik Buterin (2:42:52.620)

A person changes their, I feel like a person changes enough

Lex Fridman (2:42:56.420)

of their worldview after 25 years.

Lex Fridman (2:42:58.260)

Was there even a study about this?

Lex Fridman (2:42:59.620)

Something like a person and themselves 25 years later

Vitalik Buterin (2:43:03.140)

are about as different as like two different people

Lex Fridman (2:43:06.700)

or something like this.

Vitalik Buterin (2:43:08.020)

So, I mean, just like you can have conflict

Lex Fridman (2:43:10.940)

without bloodshed, I think you can have finiteness

Lex Fridman (2:43:14.780)

and even the necessary sorrows of finiteness

Lex Fridman (2:43:18.580)

that give meaning without like literally anyone

Vitalik Buterin (2:43:21.420)

having to end their life.

Lex Fridman (2:43:22.780)

And hopefully if we do extend our life,

Vitalik Buterin (2:43:24.660)

we'll figure out ways to extend the period of time

Lex Fridman (2:43:27.980)

where there's neuroplasticity

Vitalik Buterin (2:43:30.340)

to where we could change our worldviews continually

Lex Fridman (2:43:33.980)

throughout that time.

Lex Fridman (2:43:34.820)

So you can have these different phases of life.

Lex Fridman (2:43:38.860)

I thought it would be fun to hear you speak a little Russian.

Lex Fridman (2:43:41.540)

Do you speak Russian?

Lex Fridman (2:43:42.460)

Yes, of course.

Lex Fridman (2:43:44.260)

How did your Russian roots help you?

Lex Fridman (2:43:48.420)

That's an interesting question.

Lex Fridman (2:43:50.660)

What can you say in Russian about that?

Lex Fridman (2:43:52.740)

What can I say about my Russian roots?

Vitalik Buterin (2:43:55.860)

When I just look at other projects,

Lex Fridman (2:44:03.700)

other people in the blockchain industry,

Vitalik Buterin (2:44:07.820)

sometimes when I look at what Russian people are doing,

Lex Fridman (2:44:12.620)

what other people are doing,

Vitalik Buterin (2:44:14.300)

I can sometimes feel that these people who are Russian

Lex Fridman (2:44:21.180)

have something that feels similar to me,

Lex Fridman (2:44:27.860)

but I don't know how to explain it.

Lex Fridman (2:44:32.220)

Do you think there's, so for people who don't speak Russian,

Vitalik Buterin (2:44:35.620)

that Vitalik said that there is something to the spirit

Lex Fridman (2:44:40.860)

of the people that are Russian

Vitalik Buterin (2:44:42.220)

that are working in the cryptocurrency world

Lex Fridman (2:44:44.940)

that is a little bit different

Lex Fridman (2:44:46.820)

and it's something that connects to some kind of aspect

Lex Fridman (2:44:51.300)

of your own self, some kind of roots there.

Lex Fridman (2:44:54.500)

And it's kind of interesting.

Lex Fridman (2:44:56.580)

Do you think that there's, does it make you sad

Vitalik Buterin (2:44:59.260)

that there's these two different worlds

Lex Fridman (2:45:01.660)

that are sort of in part disconnected by language?

Lex Fridman (2:45:07.420)

And I'm sure the same could be the case with China

Lex Fridman (2:45:09.820)

and other parts of the world,

Vitalik Buterin (2:45:11.660)

where the language slows the transmission of the beauty

Lex Fridman (2:45:17.140)

of the culture in a certain kind of way

Vitalik Buterin (2:45:19.340)

where you can't truly collaborate.

Lex Fridman (2:45:21.380)

Like you can all speak English,

Lex Fridman (2:45:23.180)

so you're collaborating on maybe a technical level,

Lex Fridman (2:45:25.820)

but you're not collaborating on the level

Vitalik Buterin (2:45:28.380)

of some deep human connection.

Lex Fridman (2:45:30.660)

Do you see that being able to speak both languages?

Vitalik Buterin (2:45:34.140)

There's definitely benefits, I think,

Lex Fridman (2:45:35.860)

to be able to speak multiple languages.

Lex Fridman (2:45:38.980)

And once you can, you discover that even your mindset changes

Lex Fridman (2:45:44.980)

while you're speaking in one language versus the other.

Vitalik Buterin (2:45:47.660)

People have told me this, like, when I speak Russian,

Lex Fridman (2:45:50.460)

I sound more, I guess, to the point and pragmatic.

Vitalik Buterin (2:45:54.380)

When I speak Chinese, I sound more cute.

Lex Fridman (2:45:56.420)

When I speak English, I'm something else.

Vitalik Buterin (2:46:00.940)

I guess there's definitely a richness that you're missing

Lex Fridman (2:46:06.980)

if you're only in one of these language bubbles.

Lex Fridman (2:46:10.580)

But I guess the arguments on the other side would be that

Lex Fridman (2:46:14.940)

if everyone spoke the same language,

Vitalik Buterin (2:46:16.540)

then there would just be one bubble.

Lex Fridman (2:46:19.300)

This is the challenge, I think.

Vitalik Buterin (2:46:22.500)

There are actually benefits to having cultural diversity,

Lex Fridman (2:46:25.660)

and you definitely don't want the entire world

Vitalik Buterin (2:46:27.540)

to be too conformist.

Lex Fridman (2:46:30.180)

Well, one of the interesting things about crypto

Vitalik Buterin (2:46:31.780)

is that it's just a culture that actually manages

Lex Fridman (2:46:34.780)

to somehow have its uniqueness and even preserve its independence

Vitalik Buterin (2:46:40.180)

from all of these surrounding countries

Lex Fridman (2:46:42.940)

despite being embedded in all of them.

Lex Fridman (2:46:44.980)

So it spans outside of the geographic boundaries,

Lex Fridman (2:46:48.780)

and language in some ways does as well.

Lex Fridman (2:46:51.020)

And the way these cultures, these bubbles are created,

Lex Fridman (2:46:54.500)

I mean, they overlap in interesting ways.

Vitalik Buterin (2:46:56.300)

It's almost like a hierarchy,

Lex Fridman (2:46:57.420)

and the same is the case of the crypto world.

Vitalik Buterin (2:47:00.020)

There's communities associated with these cryptocurrencies.

Lex Fridman (2:47:03.460)

There's communities within those communities, and it's...

Vitalik Buterin (2:47:06.900)

Yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely sad

Lex Fridman (2:47:09.460)

whenever these groups are fighting each other,

Lex Fridman (2:47:13.420)

and it's definitely good for them if people can cooperate more.

Lex Fridman (2:47:19.780)

But at the same time, just having groups of people

Vitalik Buterin (2:47:24.460)

that have different kinds of life experiences,

Lex Fridman (2:47:27.740)

there's definitely something to benefit from that.

Lex Fridman (2:47:30.260)

So let me ask one last question.

Lex Fridman (2:47:31.940)

I don't think I asked you last time

Vitalik Buterin (2:47:33.780)

the ridiculous question about the meaning of life.

Lex Fridman (2:47:37.140)

You know, Dostoevsky said,

Vitalik Buterin (2:47:38.380)

beauty will save the world.

Lex Fridman (2:47:40.100)

Krasata spacet mir.

Vitalik Buterin (2:47:43.820)

Some people believe money is a big part of happiness,

Lex Fridman (2:47:46.740)

and you've turned...

Vitalik Buterin (2:47:48.860)

First of all, you've made a lot of money.

Lex Fridman (2:47:50.340)

You turned away a lot of money.

Vitalik Buterin (2:47:51.820)

You turned away a lot of power.

Lex Fridman (2:47:53.860)

So you're a fascinating person to ask,

Lex Fridman (2:47:56.220)

what do you think is meaning to life?

Lex Fridman (2:47:59.580)

The thing that I've realized with money

Vitalik Buterin (2:48:01.300)

as I have experienced both having little of it

Lex Fridman (2:48:05.460)

and having a lot of it is that the benefit of...

Vitalik Buterin (2:48:12.300)

You can get the most out of money if you think of it

Lex Fridman (2:48:15.580)

not as something that lets you do and have more things,

Lex Fridman (2:48:18.740)

but as something that lets you worry about fewer things, right?

Lex Fridman (2:48:22.780)

Like, if your savings are just nonzero at all,

Vitalik Buterin (2:48:28.300)

then you don't have to worry as much about losing your job.

Lex Fridman (2:48:31.220)

And if you feel like you have a job

Vitalik Buterin (2:48:35.020)

that just really conflicts with your values,

Lex Fridman (2:48:36.900)

then if you have even six months saved up,

Vitalik Buterin (2:48:39.020)

that just makes it easier for you to say,

Lex Fridman (2:48:40.420)

bye bye, I'm going to do something else.

Vitalik Buterin (2:48:42.620)

If you have more money, then you can not worry about

Lex Fridman (2:48:49.620)

even what you're doing needing to be profitable at all.

Vitalik Buterin (2:48:53.620)

Once you get more money, then you can choose transportation options

Lex Fridman (2:48:59.180)

and food options that just have less hassle in your life

Lex Fridman (2:49:02.420)

and allow you to be lazier.

Lex Fridman (2:49:04.300)

So, this aspect of just reducing troubles

Lex Fridman (2:49:11.340)

and opening up room for other things, I think, is a big part of it.

Lex Fridman (2:49:16.180)

If you instead think of money as being this positive

Vitalik Buterin (2:49:20.140)

or this thing that gives you stuff

Lex Fridman (2:49:22.380)

and you try to derive meaning from the stuff,

Vitalik Buterin (2:49:25.740)

I think that's much more likely to be a road to basically squandering that opportunity.

Vitalik Buterin (2:49:32.260)

So, yeah, and I guess my philosophy on that is definitely more subtractive than additive there.

Lex Fridman (2:49:38.380)

But once you have enough money that you don't have to worry about the money,

Lex Fridman (2:49:41.660)

you're burdened with another question, which is of meaning.

Lex Fridman (2:49:45.980)

Do you think there's meaning to it all?

Lex Fridman (2:49:47.900)

Or it seems like your own life,

Vitalik Buterin (2:49:51.660)

you're trying to build cool stuff that alleviates some level of suffering in the world.

Lex Fridman (2:49:59.220)

Well, I mean, one way to think about it is like,

Lex Fridman (2:50:02.380)

think back to how you thought about life when you were in school, right?

Lex Fridman (2:50:06.540)

In school, this act is interesting to think about, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:50:09.020)

Because in a lot of ways, it's just totally outside of bounds of the kinds of systems,

Lex Fridman (2:50:16.300)

like social systems that we live in as adults,

Vitalik Buterin (2:50:19.460)

or maybe not, like maybe things like academia are intended to replicate parts of school.

Lex Fridman (2:50:23.540)

Like, first of all, school is very totalitarian, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:50:26.180)

Like, you have to follow the teacher's instructions,

Lex Fridman (2:50:30.500)

the bulk of your schedule is like forced to be in particular areas,

Lex Fridman (2:50:33.780)

and you can control the real purview from leaving the grounds during this period of time,

Lex Fridman (2:50:43.420)

assign a lot of homework.

Lex Fridman (2:50:45.180)

But at the same time, also, school is a bit of a post scarcity utopia

Lex Fridman (2:50:50.220)

in that you just don't have to worry about getting resources for yourself.

Lex Fridman (2:50:53.500)

And we've both lived through 12 years of that, right?

Lex Fridman (2:50:57.660)

So, what does that say about us?

Lex Fridman (2:50:59.580)

And I think one thing of aspects, obviously, is that there's definitely an easiness to living life

Lex Fridman (2:51:10.700)

if all of your decisions are made for you.

Lex Fridman (2:51:12.940)

And one of the challenges of adulthood, I guess, is moving to this world

Lex Fridman (2:51:20.140)

where all your choices are much more self directed,

Lex Fridman (2:51:22.860)

and you just have to learn to live and deal with that.

Lex Fridman (2:51:26.540)

Yeah, dealing with the burden of freedom, in some sense.

Vitalik Buterin (2:51:30.380)

It's actually interesting, because in some ways, I feel like even my first five years

Lex Fridman (2:51:38.780)

of doing Ethereum things, my life was not even all that self directed,

Vitalik Buterin (2:51:43.420)

because a lot of it was just responding to obligations.

Lex Fridman (2:51:47.420)

Like someone said, oh, come to speak at this event in Korea.

Vitalik Buterin (2:51:51.020)

Okay, come to speak at this thing in Taiwan.

Lex Fridman (2:51:52.940)

Okay.

Vitalik Buterin (2:51:55.660)

For Ethereum to launch, we need this particular piece to be done and tested.

Lex Fridman (2:52:00.780)

Okay, work on that.

Vitalik Buterin (2:52:01.820)

We need some proof of stake algorithm, work on that.

Lex Fridman (2:52:05.820)

And the last year of COVID life, basically, I was holed up in Singapore for much of it.

Lex Fridman (2:52:14.300)

And it gave me a lot more alone time.

Lex Fridman (2:52:16.620)

I had much less travel.

Lex Fridman (2:52:18.060)

And that was definitely a very new and interesting experience for me.

Lex Fridman (2:52:21.500)

Would you characterize it by sadness, melancholy, hope, dreaming, innovative period?

Lex Fridman (2:52:31.180)

How would you characterize that alone time?

Lex Fridman (2:52:33.260)

Some of all five, definitely some self discovery.

Vitalik Buterin (2:52:37.260)

I definitely did make this very deliberate decision that, okay, I have this time,

Lex Fridman (2:52:43.420)

and I'm going to actually make something meaningful out of it.

Lex Fridman (2:52:48.780)

So one example of the things I did is I just actually started

Lex Fridman (2:52:53.980)

listening to your audio books and podcasts much more.

Vitalik Buterin (2:52:57.580)

Just this year, I basically discovered that the podcast space is real for the first time,

Lex Fridman (2:53:02.700)

I guess.

Vitalik Buterin (2:53:03.500)

Like before that, there would be things that I would get interviewed for,

Lex Fridman (2:53:06.300)

but I was not mentally incorporate this idea that podcasts are a thing that you can go listen to.

Lex Fridman (2:53:16.220)

And this year I did.

Vitalik Buterin (2:53:17.660)

My friend, Carl Lafleur, one of the optimism people, recommended hardcore history to me.

Lex Fridman (2:53:24.380)

And so I went ahead and just listened to all the hardcore histories.

Lex Fridman (2:53:27.260)

And then after that, I listened to like 10 Luxfried mids and then a bunch of others.

Lex Fridman (2:53:32.940)

And after that, I also got into audio books.

Vitalik Buterin (2:53:37.740)

Oh, I listened to the entire The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the whole thing, 45 hours.

Vitalik Buterin (2:53:44.460)

That was fascinating.

Lex Fridman (2:53:45.580)

So let me ask about Dan, because Dan is going to love hearing this.

Vitalik Buterin (2:53:48.540)

I'm going to send it to him.

Lex Fridman (2:53:50.460)

Do you have a period of history, whether it's Dan or in general,

Vitalik Buterin (2:53:54.220)

that you draw for your own life, like kind of thinking about the world,

Lex Fridman (2:53:58.060)

about human nature that you go to?

Lex Fridman (2:53:59.900)

Is it World War II?

Lex Fridman (2:54:01.100)

Is it Wrath of the Khans, the Genghis Khan?

Lex Fridman (2:54:05.420)

Is it some other more ancient history?

Lex Fridman (2:54:08.380)

Is it World War I?

Lex Fridman (2:54:09.660)

Is there something that kind of echoes with you in the voice of Dan or anyone else that you connect to?

Vitalik Buterin (2:54:16.460)

I feel like the 1930s and 40s are fascinating because they force you to really grapple with

Lex Fridman (2:54:21.660)

the question of where does evil come from, right?

Lex Fridman (2:54:25.100)

The sort of mental puzzle that I've always had in my head is, on the one hand,

Vitalik Buterin (2:54:31.740)

things like the Holocaust happened.

Lex Fridman (2:54:33.660)

But on the other hand, if you just go and have a coffee with people,

Vitalik Buterin (2:54:38.140)

then a hundred times out of a hundred, everyone just seems so nice.

Lex Fridman (2:54:41.180)

Yeah, exactly.

Lex Fridman (2:54:43.900)

How do you kind of reconcile the macro and the micro there, right?

Lex Fridman (2:54:47.580)

And that's the sort of thing that's very difficult if you don't have a lot of,

Vitalik Buterin (2:54:56.540)

I guess, the right kind of personal experience,

Lex Fridman (2:54:58.940)

especially if your personal experience starts off being sheltered, like it was for me, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:55:03.340)

I know the stereotype is that the nerds get bullied in school, but actually for me,

Lex Fridman (2:55:07.980)

in my school experience was just being treated with kindness by everyone.

Vitalik Buterin (2:55:11.020)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:55:12.220)

So that definitely made it harder to understand things.

Vitalik Buterin (2:55:15.820)

I remember actually being pretty blindsided when I started Ethereum.

Lex Fridman (2:55:19.580)

And then within six months, there started being fights over who would get more shares

Vitalik Buterin (2:55:24.460)

if Ethereum turned out to be a company.

Lex Fridman (2:55:26.460)

And then I suggested we should just make it to be a non profit,

Lex Fridman (2:55:29.100)

and somehow that ended up upsetting people.

Lex Fridman (2:55:34.860)

So the fascinating thing for me is that I've been obviously reading and listening to the history,

Lex Fridman (2:55:40.620)

and then at the same time, just observing things happening in the crypto world.

Lex Fridman (2:55:45.020)

And so one of my interesting mental intuitions that I've gotten is that I think most evil

Vitalik Buterin (2:55:55.580)

doesn't come out of greed, it comes out of fear.

Lex Fridman (2:55:58.700)

And one example of this in Ethereum lands, right, is I think the part of Ethereum history

Vitalik Buterin (2:56:08.220)

where I thought that the Ethereum community was at its lowest,

Lex Fridman (2:56:10.460)

and even when I personally was at my lowest.

Vitalik Buterin (2:56:12.540)

Now, if you go back to the Dow fork in 2016, right, so the Dow hack happened,

Lex Fridman (2:56:17.820)

and then we made this controversial decision to change the Ethereum protocol.

Lex Fridman (2:56:21.980)

And then there was that Ethereum Classic split.

Lex Fridman (2:56:28.300)

And as soon as that Ethereum Classic split happened, there was a lot of anger everywhere.

Lex Fridman (2:56:34.860)

And there started especially being anger when the price of ETC started taking up.

Lex Fridman (2:56:41.420)

So this was the time when Ether started off being $13 and Ethereum Classic started at zero,

Lex Fridman (2:56:46.860)

but then suddenly there was this one day when like ETH dropped to 12.5,

Lex Fridman (2:56:50.780)

ETC went up to 0.5, and then they dropped more.

Lex Fridman (2:56:55.100)

And people were saying things like,

Lex Fridman (2:56:57.980)

oh, this whole Ethereum Classic is just a psyop by the Bitcoin community

Lex Fridman (2:57:03.900)

and just the wealthy Bitcoiners trying to destroy Ethereum.

Lex Fridman (2:57:06.860)

And in the back of my mind, I knew that that wasn't entirely true.

Vitalik Buterin (2:57:11.020)

There definitely were Bitcoiners.

Lex Fridman (2:57:12.460)

But at the same time, I think blaming disagreements on foreign interference,

Vitalik Buterin (2:57:20.860)

like this is the sort of thing that countries, governments do all the time,

Lex Fridman (2:57:25.820)

it's a very convenient excuse because it allows you to just blame these things

Vitalik Buterin (2:57:31.260)

that are happening on the foreigners and avoid actually grappling with the facts that like,

Lex Fridman (2:57:36.380)

well, no, actually you have people in your very own community

Vitalik Buterin (2:57:38.860)

who just disagree with you and have a different belief.

Lex Fridman (2:57:41.660)

And I feel like the Ethereum community during that time

Vitalik Buterin (2:57:46.540)

did not do a very good job of grappling with that.

Lex Fridman (2:57:48.780)

And I feel like I during that time did not do a very good job of grappling with that.

Lex Fridman (2:57:52.940)

And so there was a lot of blaming the Bitcoiners.

Lex Fridman (2:57:56.060)

There were also even a lot of people calling for us to use trademark law

Lex Fridman (2:58:00.460)

and basically sue exchanges and try to prevent them from listing Ethereum Classic.

Lex Fridman (2:58:05.660)

And to me, that was very unethical, right?

Vitalik Buterin (2:58:07.500)

Like basically using the government as a weapon to try to attack the other cryptocurrency

Lex Fridman (2:58:17.180)

and destroy it goes completely against the ideals of freedom

Lex Fridman (2:58:21.420)

and things that at least in theory were supposed to stand for.

Lex Fridman (2:58:25.580)

But in that particular time, basically what was happening was that the ETC price was rising.

Lex Fridman (2:58:32.700)

And at the same time, the ETH price was dropping in lockstep.

Lex Fridman (2:58:36.060)

And there were a lot of Bitcoin people basically saying this is the end of Ethereum.

Lex Fridman (2:58:40.140)

And I think a lot of people really were afraid that

Lex Fridman (2:58:42.780)

Ethereum would be just like completely destroyed as a result of this.

Lex Fridman (2:58:45.900)

And so that's where the anger came from.

Lex Fridman (2:58:48.700)

Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Vitalik Buterin (2:58:50.300)

It came from the fear.

Lex Fridman (2:58:51.260)

And that's what allowed people to rationalize in abandonment of principles

Vitalik Buterin (2:58:56.940)

that I think they would not have accepted in other circumstances.

Lex Fridman (2:59:01.740)

And I definitely, to some extent, played along with this myself.

Lex Fridman (2:59:06.700)

And I do definitely regret that to some extent.

Lex Fridman (2:59:10.060)

Well, I definitely regret the excesses completely.

Lex Fridman (2:59:17.020)

And then obviously, Bitcoin block size war, similar sort of stuff happened.

Lex Fridman (2:59:21.580)

So that insight was interesting because it does mentally make a lot of sense

Vitalik Buterin (2:59:30.700)

when you're actually afraid that unless you act in some way

Lex Fridman (2:59:34.220)

that your entire world is going to collapse.

Vitalik Buterin (2:59:36.300)

It's much easier to just rationalize forgetting your principles

Lex Fridman (2:59:39.820)

and doing whatever you have to just save the specific thing that you care about.

Vitalik Buterin (2:59:44.140)

It feels like the right thing to do, the brave thing to do is in the face of fear

Lex Fridman (2:59:51.660)

to still have compassion, to still have love as opposed to hate.

Lex Fridman (2:59:56.780)

So the darkest moments, the toughest moments of human history

Lex Fridman (30:01.900)

it can't get reverted and all of these things

Vitalik Buterin (30:04.220)

that we expect from a blockchain.

Lex Fridman (30:06.220)

So existing blockchains, including Bitcoin,

Vitalik Buterin (30:08.860)

including the Ethereum of today,

Lex Fridman (30:10.340)

and including a lot of them, they use proof of work, right?

Lex Fridman (30:13.540)

So the reason why we need proof of anything

Lex Fridman (30:17.860)

is because they serve this function that I call

Vitalik Buterin (30:22.700)

an economic civil resistance.

Lex Fridman (30:25.420)

So that's obviously a big word for,

Vitalik Buterin (30:28.660)

especially if you've never heard of symbols before,

Lex Fridman (30:30.980)

but like the basic idea is, right,

Vitalik Buterin (30:32.540)

that you have a network and you have lots of computers

Lex Fridman (30:34.580)

that agree on like which blocks to accept.

Lex Fridman (30:36.900)

And sometimes you get two blocks that get published

Lex Fridman (30:39.340)

at the same time and you just have to agree on an order.

Lex Fridman (30:41.420)

So there has to be some kind of voting game.

Lex Fridman (30:44.220)

But then the question is, well, in this voting game,

Lex Fridman (30:46.820)

who gets to vote, who gets to participate?

Lex Fridman (30:49.380)

Now, you can't say one person, one vote, right?

Vitalik Buterin (30:52.140)

The reason why you cannot say one person, one vote

Lex Fridman (30:54.100)

is because you need some kind of like authority

Vitalik Buterin (30:57.060)

or some kind of mechanism to say who the humans are.

Lex Fridman (31:00.900)

And if you don't have that,

Vitalik Buterin (31:02.940)

then a bad guy could just come in with a virtual machine

Lex Fridman (31:05.900)

or with a computer that has on it 10 billion virtual machines

Vitalik Buterin (31:08.980)

that have 10 billion virtual nodes.

Lex Fridman (31:11.100)

And then just like say, look, I'm 99% of the network,

Vitalik Buterin (31:13.860)

I should control everything.

Lex Fridman (31:15.780)

So to prevent this, what proof of work and proof of stake

Vitalik Buterin (31:19.620)

both do is they basically say, well, the weight of your vote,

Lex Fridman (31:23.180)

like how much influence your votes have in the consensus

Vitalik Buterin (31:27.540)

is proportional to like what quantity

Lex Fridman (31:29.980)

of economic resources you bring in.

Lex Fridman (31:31.780)

So in the case of proof of work,

Lex Fridman (31:33.380)

you prove what economic resources you have

Vitalik Buterin (31:35.340)

because your economic resources are computers

Lex Fridman (31:37.460)

and you prove that you have them

Vitalik Buterin (31:38.780)

by just running them 24 seven

Lex Fridman (31:40.420)

using these hash algorithms, right?

Lex Fridman (31:42.740)

So this does solve the problem, right?

Lex Fridman (31:45.020)

Because in order to attack the network,

Vitalik Buterin (31:47.300)

you have to come in with more computers

Lex Fridman (31:50.180)

and more money invested into computers and electricity

Vitalik Buterin (31:53.300)

than the rest of the network puts together.

Lex Fridman (31:55.460)

And that's extremely expensive.

Vitalik Buterin (31:57.380)

In proof of stake, instead of relying on people

Lex Fridman (32:00.420)

with computers that are just constantly cranking out

Vitalik Buterin (32:03.060)

hashes 24 seven, as you're like a unit of economic resources,

Lex Fridman (32:08.780)

you just use like holdings of coins inside the system, right?

Lex Fridman (32:11.700)

So all of these blockchains,

Lex Fridman (32:12.780)

they have some kind of coin in them.

Vitalik Buterin (32:14.460)

Bitcoin has Bitcoin, Ethereum has ether,

Lex Fridman (32:17.380)

they all have a coin.

Lex Fridman (32:18.260)

So why not just use that as the economic resource

Lex Fridman (32:22.940)

that you're using to measure participation.

Lex Fridman (32:25.860)

So that's like the core distinction

Lex Fridman (32:29.220)

between proof of work and proof of stake.

Vitalik Buterin (32:31.900)

I like proof of stake

Lex Fridman (32:32.940)

and I've liked proof of stake for many years,

Vitalik Buterin (32:35.380)

basically because like it just requires

Lex Fridman (32:38.260)

much less ongoing resource consumption, right?

Vitalik Buterin (32:41.260)

Like with proof of work,

Lex Fridman (32:42.820)

you have to like actually go and buy these physical computers

Lex Fridman (32:45.700)

and these days, they have specialized hardware,

Lex Fridman (32:49.180)

ASICs, application specific integrated circuits.

Vitalik Buterin (32:51.940)

You have to go produce them and you have to go buy them.

Lex Fridman (32:54.140)

And unless you have millions of dollars,

Vitalik Buterin (32:56.660)

you have to buy them from one of these other people

Lex Fridman (32:58.500)

who creates them and those other people often end up

Vitalik Buterin (33:01.300)

taking a huge cut of the profits themselves.

Lex Fridman (33:03.660)

And then you have to plug them in,

Vitalik Buterin (33:06.860)

you have to just burn all of this electricity

Lex Fridman (33:09.820)

that's just running 24 seven.

Lex Fridman (33:11.820)

So it consumes a huge amount of energy, right?

Lex Fridman (33:14.300)

And not just energy, it also,

Lex Fridman (33:17.060)

just to create the hardware, right?

Lex Fridman (33:19.060)

Like people focus a lot on energy,

Lex Fridman (33:20.620)

but like actually about half the cost of proof of work

Lex Fridman (33:23.500)

mining is the cost of the hardware.

Lex Fridman (33:25.380)

So hardware is a very big deal too.

Lex Fridman (33:28.060)

And you need this really big and powerful,

Vitalik Buterin (33:32.060)

very specialized hardware,

Lex Fridman (33:33.340)

another kind that fills up these big warehouses.

Lex Fridman (33:35.620)

So proof of stake,

Lex Fridman (33:36.620)

you don't really need that much electricity,

Vitalik Buterin (33:38.980)

you just need just a little bit to run a regular computer.

Lex Fridman (33:42.980)

You can run proof of stake validators on computers

Vitalik Buterin (33:45.340)

that you already have.

Lex Fridman (33:47.220)

So it's just much less resource intensive.

Lex Fridman (33:52.100)

And like, this is good for a few reasons, right?

Lex Fridman (33:53.900)

Like one is, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (33:55.020)

the kind of environmental rationale that, you know,

Lex Fridman (33:57.380)

you're not breaking the environment.

Vitalik Buterin (33:59.500)

The second is that you're not taking away electricity

Lex Fridman (34:03.540)

and like other resources from other people.

Vitalik Buterin (34:06.060)

I mean, like right now there's,

Lex Fridman (34:07.860)

I think just today I saw a story about like Iran

Vitalik Buterin (34:10.620)

wanting to shut down some Bitcoin mining

Lex Fridman (34:12.580)

because it was just grabbing up so much electricity

Vitalik Buterin (34:15.220)

that it was, you know, outbidding the nearby towns

Lex Fridman (34:17.300)

and they just didn't have enough.

Lex Fridman (34:19.740)

And then there was like Chia,

Lex Fridman (34:22.140)

the one that's doing proof of like hard disk mining

Vitalik Buterin (34:24.700)

basically is just like grabbing up so many hard disks,

Lex Fridman (34:27.060)

there's a shortage, right?

Lex Fridman (34:28.940)

So that's the second reason.

Lex Fridman (34:29.900)

And then the third more selfish reason is that

Vitalik Buterin (34:32.540)

because participating in consensus

Lex Fridman (34:34.660)

does not require so much energy expenditure,

Lex Fridman (34:37.580)

you don't need to pay people as much to participate, right?

Lex Fridman (34:40.660)

So like Bitcoin and Ethereum,

Vitalik Buterin (34:42.100)

they both issue somewhere around 4% of the total supply

Lex Fridman (34:46.300)

every year right now to miners.

Lex Fridman (34:48.420)

So Ethereum is about 4.7 million ether

Lex Fridman (34:50.820)

and the current supply is about 115 million.

Lex Fridman (34:53.500)

But with proof of stake,

Lex Fridman (34:54.460)

like we expect it'll be somewhere between 500,000

Lex Fridman (34:58.380)

and one million per year.

Lex Fridman (35:00.260)

So that means, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (35:02.900)

the supply doesn't have to increase so quickly.

Lex Fridman (35:06.860)

So.

Vitalik Buterin (35:07.700)

One of the pros that the people sort of argue for the proof

Lex Fridman (35:12.340)

of work is that it is secure

Vitalik Buterin (35:14.820)

because it's much more difficult to sort of,

Lex Fridman (35:17.820)

as you've highlighted, it's difficult to participate.

Vitalik Buterin (35:19.980)

Is there, what are your thoughts about the security

Lex Fridman (35:25.180)

of the proof of stake mechanism?

Lex Fridman (35:28.980)

Is there ways to make it secure?

Lex Fridman (35:30.700)

So I think proof of stake is very secure

Vitalik Buterin (35:32.660)

because in order to be able to attack the system,

Lex Fridman (35:36.540)

you needs to have like basically as much stake

Lex Fridman (35:39.220)

as the rest of the network, right?

Lex Fridman (35:41.220)

So that means like right now, for example,

Vitalik Buterin (35:43.100)

we have 5 million eth staking.

Lex Fridman (35:44.620)

So you have to come up with 5 million eth

Lex Fridman (35:46.260)

and then join the network.

Lex Fridman (35:47.620)

And then the other, so 5 million eth is a lot, right?

Lex Fridman (35:51.980)

It's like, how much is it now?

Lex Fridman (35:53.700)

Like $15 billion.

Lex Fridman (35:55.220)

So that's actually more than I believe the cost

Lex Fridman (35:58.260)

of attacking the Bitcoin network.

Lex Fridman (36:00.420)

And then the second thing is that recovering

Lex Fridman (36:03.020)

from attacks is much easier in proof of stake

Lex Fridman (36:04.980)

than in proof of work, right?

Lex Fridman (36:05.940)

Because in proof of stake, you have, like, first of all,

Vitalik Buterin (36:08.980)

we have for many kinds of attacks

Lex Fridman (36:10.660)

that you do against this network,

Lex Fridman (36:12.140)

we have this concept of like automatic slashing, right?

Lex Fridman (36:14.660)

Which basically means that in order

Vitalik Buterin (36:16.700)

to like revert a finalized block,

Lex Fridman (36:19.340)

so if there's one block that's like accepted by the network

Lex Fridman (36:22.180)

and you try to convince the network

Lex Fridman (36:23.940)

to kind of revert that block and accept a different block,

Vitalik Buterin (36:26.940)

in order to make that kind of attack,

Lex Fridman (36:28.820)

you basically have to have your validator,

Vitalik Buterin (36:31.940)

like a big portion of your validator

Lex Fridman (36:33.540)

assigned to conflicting messages.

Lex Fridman (36:35.980)

And this is something that like once these messages

Lex Fridman (36:38.380)

are on the network, like you can go and prove,

Vitalik Buterin (36:39.940)

like, look, these people did it.

Lex Fridman (36:41.340)

And so we have this feature in the protocol called slashing

Vitalik Buterin (36:43.940)

where you basically take all these people

Lex Fridman (36:45.820)

who provably misbehaved and you burn their coins, right?

Lex Fridman (36:48.780)

And you don't burn anyone else's coins.

Lex Fridman (36:50.780)

Now, there are other cases, like for example,

Vitalik Buterin (36:53.660)

if instead of reverting blocks,

Lex Fridman (36:55.500)

the attack just tries to censor everyone, right?

Vitalik Buterin (36:57.740)

Then everyone who got censored would just like

Lex Fridman (37:01.020)

basically create the minority chain

Lex Fridman (37:02.980)

and then the community would basically

Lex Fridman (37:05.340)

have to do a soft fork, right?

Vitalik Buterin (37:06.500)

They would just have to say like,

Lex Fridman (37:07.460)

look, this chain is clearly attacking us,

Vitalik Buterin (37:09.060)

this chain is the one not attacking us,

Lex Fridman (37:10.780)

and so we're gonna join this chain.

Lex Fridman (37:12.340)

And then what happens is that on that new chain,

Lex Fridman (37:15.140)

the attackers also lose a lot of coins, right?

Lex Fridman (37:17.580)

So the difference between proof of stake and proof of work

Lex Fridman (37:20.660)

is that in a proof of stake system,

Vitalik Buterin (37:22.260)

like you can identify specific participants

Lex Fridman (37:24.660)

and you can say, you know, these,

Lex Fridman (37:26.540)

and like this isn't like, you know,

Lex Fridman (37:27.980)

a human going in and saying, I don't like you,

Vitalik Buterin (37:29.620)

I don't like you, I don't like you,

Lex Fridman (37:30.580)

this is like automated, right?

Lex Fridman (37:32.300)

So the slashing process is automated.

Lex Fridman (37:34.660)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (37:35.500)

Is there ways it can go wrong?

Lex Fridman (37:37.420)

So that's a painful process where the coins are burned.

Vitalik Buterin (37:41.300)

It is painful, yes.

Lex Fridman (37:42.540)

I think, I mean, the one big unknown, of course,

Vitalik Buterin (37:45.940)

is like if an attack actually happens

Lex Fridman (37:48.540)

and like if an attack happens that requires the community

Vitalik Buterin (37:51.340)

to actually choose one of these minority forks,

Lex Fridman (37:53.780)

then like what would the community

Lex Fridman (37:57.120)

actually successfully coordinating on this look like, right?

Lex Fridman (37:59.980)

Like it's like, you know, we can talk about it

Lex Fridman (38:03.220)

and we can, you know, write like science fiction novels

Lex Fridman (38:05.940)

about it, but like until it's happened,

Vitalik Buterin (38:07.900)

you don't really know the details of like what it looks like

Lex Fridman (38:09.980)

and how difficult it is.

Lex Fridman (38:11.020)

What are the channels of communication for the community?

Lex Fridman (38:13.540)

If you can enlighten me a little bit, like what, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (38:18.020)

in many ways in the political realm,

Lex Fridman (38:19.980)

Twitter is often used as a way to kind of have

Vitalik Buterin (38:22.540)

these emerging phenomena of large groups of people

Lex Fridman (38:25.400)

coming to a consensus about a particular idea.

Lex Fridman (38:28.300)

And then there's battle for consensus.

Lex Fridman (38:30.340)

What's in the Ethereum community, how do people,

Lex Fridman (38:35.140)

what are the sources of natural language based communication

Lex Fridman (38:39.380)

that have an emergent belief structure that you would say?

Lex Fridman (38:43.940)

Or is it all through money?

Lex Fridman (38:45.340)

Is it all through trading that the communication happens?

Vitalik Buterin (38:48.100)

There's definitely talking as well.

Lex Fridman (38:50.140)

I mean, like we have to agree on protocol changes somehow,

Vitalik Buterin (38:53.420)

right, like there's Twitter, there's Reddit,

Lex Fridman (38:55.380)

there's GitHub, there's all of the various Ethereum forums,

Vitalik Buterin (39:00.500)

Ethereum magicians, Ethereum research.

Lex Fridman (39:02.780)

There's just in person communication.

Vitalik Buterin (39:05.020)

Then there's just kind of like the hidden web

Lex Fridman (39:06.860)

of everyone talking to everyone on Telegram or Signal.

Lex Fridman (39:11.220)

So it's like some of everything, right?

Lex Fridman (39:14.020)

But I think like the thing to emphasize around like,

Lex Fridman (39:17.540)

can you actually come to consensus on, you know,

Lex Fridman (39:19.660)

whether or not to fork the chain

Vitalik Buterin (39:21.500)

because the attacker is censoring everyone,

Lex Fridman (39:23.520)

just for example, is like everyone who's running a node

Lex Fridman (39:27.820)

is going to see almost the same thing, right?

Lex Fridman (39:30.380)

Like they're gonna be off by a few seconds

Lex Fridman (39:32.440)

and like maybe they'll be off by a few minutes,

Lex Fridman (39:34.140)

they'll disagree by a few minutes.

Lex Fridman (39:35.460)

But like if it's a serious attack, you know,

Lex Fridman (39:37.680)

people are gonna know, right?

Vitalik Buterin (39:38.780)

It's not like one of those things where, you know,

Lex Fridman (39:40.900)

oh, we're trying to agree on like, I don't know,

Vitalik Buterin (39:43.900)

did Epstein kill himself or like some random political fact

Lex Fridman (39:48.100)

where like in reality, no one knows a single thing

Vitalik Buterin (39:50.060)

about what's actually going on and they're all speculating.

Lex Fridman (39:52.580)

Like it is much more visible, right?

Lex Fridman (39:54.340)

So we do have that, but you know, at the same time,

Lex Fridman (39:57.300)

I'm happy to admit that like,

Vitalik Buterin (39:59.160)

these are fairly untested mechanisms,

Lex Fridman (3:00:01.500)

are those where fear is everywhere.

Lex Fridman (3:00:04.700)

And despite that, the way to get out of that is through love, not giving into the fear.

Lex Fridman (3:00:14.860)

And again, that's the lesson that you draw from all those moments of history.

Vitalik Buterin (3:00:20.540)

Yeah.

Vitalik Buterin (3:00:21.660)

Well, I like you have in terms of those coffee and the kindness that people have,

Vitalik Buterin (3:00:26.060)

it does seem that everybody has the capacity for evil

Lex Fridman (3:00:29.340)

and everybody has the capacity for love.

Lex Fridman (3:00:31.500)

And you just have to create mechanisms and incentives

Lex Fridman (3:00:35.100)

that prioritize the latter over the former.

Vitalik Buterin (3:00:38.380)

Vitalik, you're one of the most interesting people I've gotten a chance to talk to.

Lex Fridman (3:00:44.060)

Thank you so much for talking to me.

Vitalik Buterin (3:00:45.580)

I hope we get a chance to talk again.

Lex Fridman (3:00:47.500)

I hope I can at least be some small part.

Vitalik Buterin (3:00:50.220)

This would be awesome in a podcast with you and Dan Carlin.

Lex Fridman (3:00:53.340)

That would be an awesome conversation.

Vitalik Buterin (3:00:56.380)

Thank you so much for doing so much incredible technical innovation

Lex Fridman (3:01:01.820)

that inspires the computer scientists, the economists,

Vitalik Buterin (3:01:05.900)

inspires the world and what technology can do.

Lex Fridman (3:01:08.860)

And now with longevity, I do hope we live a very long time

Lex Fridman (3:01:14.620)

and play Diablo to make that long time fun.

Lex Fridman (3:01:19.580)

Thank you so much for talking today.

Vitalik Buterin (3:01:20.860)

Thank you too, Alex.

Lex Fridman (3:01:21.580)

This was great.

Vitalik Buterin (3:01:23.260)

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Vitalik Buterin

Lex Fridman (3:01:26.060)

and thank you to Athletic Greens, Magic Spoon,

Vitalik Buterin (3:01:29.420)

Indeed, Four Sigmatic and BetterHelp.

Lex Fridman (3:01:32.860)

Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

Lex Fridman (3:01:36.620)

And now let me leave you with some words from Nelson Mandela.

Lex Fridman (3:01:40.780)

When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in,

Vitalik Buterin (3:01:44.540)

he has no choice but to become an outlaw.

Lex Fridman (3:01:47.820)

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

Lex Fridman (40:02.080)

but like at the same time,

Lex Fridman (40:03.340)

they're also untested mechanisms in Proof of Work, right?

Lex Fridman (40:05.820)

And like in Proof of Work, it's even harder

Lex Fridman (40:07.460)

because in Proof of Work, you don't have the ability

Vitalik Buterin (40:09.940)

to like identify and say, like, you know,

Lex Fridman (40:12.260)

I'm going to these miners attacked

Lex Fridman (40:14.300)

and so we're not gonna let these miners in,

Lex Fridman (40:17.180)

these miners did not attack, so we're gonna keep them in.

Vitalik Buterin (40:20.220)

Like you have to pretty much, you know,

Lex Fridman (40:21.500)

either take out none of the miners

Vitalik Buterin (40:23.740)

or you do a fork that changes the Proof of Work algorithm

Lex Fridman (40:26.460)

which takes out all of the miners, right?

Lex Fridman (40:28.020)

So the economics of like recovering from attacks

Lex Fridman (40:32.140)

in Proof of Work, at least to me,

Vitalik Buterin (40:33.540)

actually do seem like more unfavorable,

Lex Fridman (40:36.960)

but you know, I'm sure the Proof of Work people you talk to

Vitalik Buterin (40:39.740)

will give a very different and contradictory opinions

Lex Fridman (40:42.460)

and that's totally fine and amazing.

Vitalik Buterin (40:44.620)

Some people describe MEV, minor extractable value,

Lex Fridman (40:48.740)

as an existential risk to Ethereum.

Lex Fridman (40:51.680)

What is MEV?

Lex Fridman (40:52.820)

How important is it to solve MEV?

Lex Fridman (40:55.020)

If it's important, what ideas do you have?

Lex Fridman (40:57.180)

Sure, how about after this one,

Vitalik Buterin (40:58.760)

we'll also talk about sharding because it's amazing

Lex Fridman (41:01.060)

and it's part of you too.

Vitalik Buterin (41:01.900)

Yes, we'll return back to sharding

Lex Fridman (41:03.660)

which is, we'll return to the big picture

Vitalik Buterin (41:06.060)

of the scaling problem as you mentioned.

Lex Fridman (41:07.980)

I love this conversation, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (41:09.740)

depth first search instead of breadth first.

Lex Fridman (41:11.740)

So basically, okay, MEV, minor extractable value,

Vitalik Buterin (41:16.740)

it is not different in Proof of Work and Proof of Stake,

Lex Fridman (41:19.160)

right, so like if you want to call it, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (41:21.120)

block proposer extractable value,

Lex Fridman (41:22.880)

like it sounds a lot sexy, but you know,

Lex Fridman (41:24.280)

we can call it BPEV instead of MEV, who cares?

Lex Fridman (41:27.360)

So this is a problem in both Proof of Work

Lex Fridman (41:30.040)

and Proof of Stake?

Lex Fridman (41:30.880)

Yes, so the basic idea is that if you have the ability

Vitalik Buterin (41:36.960)

to choose which transactions go into a block

Lex Fridman (41:39.800)

and in what order, then you have the ability

Vitalik Buterin (41:42.720)

to like take advantage of that position for economic gain

Lex Fridman (41:45.720)

and for economic gain in a lot more ways

Lex Fridman (41:48.000)

than just collecting transaction fees, right?

Lex Fridman (41:50.080)

Like for example, there's decentralized exchanges on chain

Vitalik Buterin (41:52.880)

like Uniswap and like let's say the price

Lex Fridman (41:56.020)

of ETH versus USDC was 2,700 the previous block,

Lex Fridman (42:01.960)

but then there was a bit of a market drop

Lex Fridman (42:03.480)

and now it's 2,680 where you can go on Uniswap

Lex Fridman (42:05.960)

and you can just like gobble up the entire part of,

Lex Fridman (42:09.060)

you know, the automated order book

Lex Fridman (42:10.960)

that's like between 2,700 and 2,680, right?

Lex Fridman (42:13.520)

And that's, and then at the same time, you like run a bot

Lex Fridman (42:16.640)

and you know, you buy some ETH back at 2,680

Lex Fridman (42:19.480)

and you've just like made about $10 of profit, right?

Vitalik Buterin (42:21.760)

So, or well, $10 times, you know, whatever the depth is.

Lex Fridman (42:25.120)

Right, so there's lots of little things like that.

Vitalik Buterin (42:28.520)

There's also things that involve like front running

Lex Fridman (42:31.560)

other people's transactions.

Lex Fridman (42:33.240)

So one example of this would be that if someone sends

Lex Fridman (42:37.060)

a transaction that says, I don't know,

Vitalik Buterin (42:39.920)

buy me five ETH for whatever price that you can get,

Lex Fridman (42:45.760)

then, but with a maximum of, let's say $15,000,

Vitalik Buterin (42:50.920)

then you can go and like, you can send each,

Lex Fridman (42:53.680)

put a transaction right in front of that transaction

Lex Fridman (42:55.800)

and you can like buy up that ETH first

Lex Fridman (42:57.600)

and then you resell it to him at, you know,

Lex Fridman (42:59.120)

$15,000 minus one, you know?

Lex Fridman (43:00.920)

So there's.

Vitalik Buterin (43:02.480)

Then you get to make a little bit of money that way.

Lex Fridman (43:03.880)

Exactly, so there's a lot of these different

Vitalik Buterin (43:05.600)

like arbitrage, front running, back running,

Lex Fridman (43:07.360)

these different tricks that allow block proposers to.

Vitalik Buterin (43:11.120)

To get some percentage on top, like overhead.

Lex Fridman (43:13.560)

Exactly, and the reason why this is a challenge

Vitalik Buterin (43:17.480)

is because it's, I mean, like first of all,

Lex Fridman (43:21.680)

it sometimes degrades user experience

Vitalik Buterin (43:24.340)

because users get no less favorable trades,

Lex Fridman (43:27.440)

but there are sometimes ways to like mitigate that

Vitalik Buterin (43:30.560)

for applications, sometimes it's not that bad,

Lex Fridman (43:32.960)

but like the bigger risk that I think some people consider

Vitalik Buterin (43:35.800)

more existential is that there's just much more

Lex Fridman (43:38.960)

economies of scale in figuring out

Lex Fridman (43:41.080)

how to extract all this revenue, right?

Lex Fridman (43:43.020)

Because if you're just collecting transaction fees,

Vitalik Buterin (43:45.200)

there aren't really economies of scale,

Lex Fridman (43:47.400)

there aren't really benefits to centralizing, right?

Vitalik Buterin (43:49.240)

Because it's a very simple formula,

Lex Fridman (43:50.600)

you just like grab up the transactions that pay you the most.

Lex Fridman (43:53.320)

But with MEV, there's all these sophisticated algorithms

Lex Fridman (43:57.760)

and if you have lots of money,

Vitalik Buterin (43:59.940)

then you can hire really smart people

Lex Fridman (44:01.400)

to make amazing algorithms and then you can use

Vitalik Buterin (44:03.160)

the other half of your money to get a lot of mining power

Lex Fridman (44:06.080)

or a lot of stake and you get a lot of opportunities

Vitalik Buterin (44:08.160)

to use your even better algorithms.

Lex Fridman (44:09.940)

So there's this risk that like as a result of this,

Vitalik Buterin (44:14.480)

mining is basically, or even validating proof of stake

Lex Fridman (44:18.600)

is going to centralize.

Lex Fridman (44:20.860)

So I think the ecosystem is best replied

Lex Fridman (44:23.920)

to this sort of risk and it's the direction

Vitalik Buterin (44:25.840)

where projects like Flashbots are going already

Lex Fridman (44:28.880)

is if you can't eliminate the centralization,

Lex Fridman (44:33.500)

then you try to firewall it, right?

Lex Fridman (44:35.200)

And the way that you firewall it is you basically say,

Vitalik Buterin (44:39.080)

we're going to try to deliberately create a marketplace

Lex Fridman (44:42.000)

where people can just do the complicated work

Vitalik Buterin (44:45.320)

of creating what are called bundles,

Lex Fridman (44:47.080)

like bundles of transactions that are very profitable, right?

Lex Fridman (44:51.880)

And then at the other side of the market,

Lex Fridman (44:54.200)

you just have like block proposes reminders

Vitalik Buterin (44:56.600)

that are just dumb notes.

Lex Fridman (44:57.760)

And they go and ask the what are called searchers,

Vitalik Buterin (45:00.840)

the bundle creators, and they just ask like,

Lex Fridman (45:02.800)

hey, like how much can you give me if I put in your bundle?

Lex Fridman (45:05.560)

And then they just take the highest offer, right?

Lex Fridman (45:07.560)

So you sort of separate out the task

Lex Fridman (45:09.360)

and you have the easy part and then you have the hard part

Lex Fridman (45:12.640)

and you have like this special class of actor

Vitalik Buterin (45:14.580)

called a searcher that does the hard part

Lex Fridman (45:16.080)

and then the easy part, the people doing the easy part,

Vitalik Buterin (45:19.440)

which is just miners and validators,

Lex Fridman (45:20.720)

they kind of just talk to all the different people

Vitalik Buterin (45:24.540)

doing the searching and they just accept the highest bidder.

Lex Fridman (45:27.720)

So this is also just like an interesting example

Lex Fridman (45:33.160)

of like economic design philosophy, right?

Lex Fridman (45:35.240)

Like sometimes you can't just like make centralization

Vitalik Buterin (45:38.320)

go away, sometimes it's inevitable,

Lex Fridman (45:39.860)

but no, at least you can try to kind of contain it,

Vitalik Buterin (45:43.200)

you can direct it or you can even sort of firewall it away

Lex Fridman (45:47.340)

from core consensus,

Vitalik Buterin (45:49.280)

the parts that really do need to be decentralized.

Lex Fridman (45:51.960)

But you don't see it as an existential risk,

Vitalik Buterin (45:53.760)

it's just a bit of a problem

Lex Fridman (45:56.280)

that it has to be constantly dealt with.

Vitalik Buterin (45:57.960)

It's a risk, like there's obviously a risk

Lex Fridman (46:00.960)

that it's a very severe problem

Lex Fridman (46:04.080)

and that even this flash bots approach

Lex Fridman (46:06.040)

has some fatal flaw or whatever.

Lex Fridman (46:08.120)

But we're definitely approaching it

Lex Fridman (46:12.080)

with the mindset of this is a problem

Lex Fridman (46:14.340)

and like, yes, we do have to do some work to solve it,

Lex Fridman (46:16.400)

but we're doing it and so far it's being solved.

Vitalik Buterin (46:20.220)

Okay, let's talk about the other really, really fascinating

Lex Fridman (46:23.360)

part of the future of Ethereum.

Vitalik Buterin (46:26.720)

Let's not call it Ethereum 2.0,

Lex Fridman (46:28.880)

but the future of Ethereum

Vitalik Buterin (46:30.440)

that also may require a hard fork,

Lex Fridman (46:32.580)

I don't know, you can correct me on this,

Vitalik Buterin (46:34.920)

is well, broadly ideas for scaling.

Lex Fridman (46:39.640)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (46:40.480)

And more specifically sort of layer two

Lex Fridman (46:44.000)

or layer one and two intersection ideas

Vitalik Buterin (46:48.440)

of how to achieve scaling.

Lex Fridman (46:50.000)

And at the core of that is the idea of sharding.

Lex Fridman (46:52.680)

So first, what is sharding?

Lex Fridman (46:55.240)

Okay, so there's two major paradigms

Lex Fridman (46:59.720)

for scaling blockchains, right?

Lex Fridman (47:01.000)

As you said, layer one and layer two.

Lex Fridman (47:03.000)

And layer one basically means

Lex Fridman (47:05.160)

make the blockchain itself capable

Vitalik Buterin (47:07.940)

of processing more transactions

Lex Fridman (47:09.840)

by having some mechanism by which it can do that

Vitalik Buterin (47:13.600)

despite the fact that there's a limit

Lex Fridman (47:15.600)

to the capacity of each participant in the blockchain.

Lex Fridman (47:18.040)

And then layer two says,

Lex Fridman (47:19.080)

well, we're gonna keep the blockchain as is,

Lex Fridman (47:21.300)

but we're gonna create clever protocols

Lex Fridman (47:23.840)

that sit on top of the blockchain

Vitalik Buterin (47:25.500)

that still use the blockchain

Lex Fridman (47:26.920)

and then still kind of inherit things

Vitalik Buterin (47:28.720)

like the security guarantees of a blockchain.

Lex Fridman (47:31.000)

But at the same time, a lot of things are done off chain.

Lex Fridman (47:33.840)

And so you get more scalability that way.

Lex Fridman (47:36.660)

So in Ethereum, the most popular paradigm

Vitalik Buterin (47:39.720)

for layer two is rollups

Lex Fridman (47:40.920)

and the most popular paradigm for layer one is sharding.

Lex Fridman (47:43.280)

So one way to achieve layer one scaling

Lex Fridman (47:46.240)

is to increase the block size.

Vitalik Buterin (47:48.080)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (47:48.920)

Block size wars, quote, unquote.

Lex Fridman (47:51.880)

And you actually tweeted something about,

Lex Fridman (47:55.800)

people are saying that Vitalik changed his mind about,

Vitalik Buterin (47:58.520)

he went from being a small blocker to a big to small.

Lex Fridman (48:05.880)

But you said, I've been a medium blocker all along.

Lex Fridman (48:09.320)

So maybe you can also comment on where,

Lex Fridman (48:11.760)

on the very basic aspect before we even get to sharding

Vitalik Buterin (48:14.840)

of where you stand on this block size debate.

Lex Fridman (48:17.400)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (48:18.240)

So the way that I think about the trade off

Lex Fridman (48:20.080)

is I think about it as a trade off

Vitalik Buterin (48:21.580)

between making it easy to write to the blockchain

Lex Fridman (48:24.200)

and making it easy to read the blockchain.

Lex Fridman (48:26.440)

So when I say read, I just mean,

Lex Fridman (48:28.480)

have a node and actually verify it

Lex Fridman (48:30.160)

and make sure that it's correct and all of those things.

Lex Fridman (48:32.280)

And then by write, I mean send transactions.

Lex Fridman (48:34.680)

So I think for decentralization,

Lex Fridman (48:37.240)

it's important for both of these tasks to be accessible.

Lex Fridman (48:40.220)

And I think that they're about equally importance.

Lex Fridman (48:43.040)

If you have a chain that's too expensive to read,

Vitalik Buterin (48:45.120)

then everyone will just trust a few people

Lex Fridman (48:46.800)

to read for them.

Lex Fridman (48:48.360)

And then those people can change the rules

Lex Fridman (48:49.920)

without anyone else's permission.

Lex Fridman (48:51.680)

But if on the other hand,

Lex Fridman (48:53.360)

it becomes really expensive to write,

Vitalik Buterin (48:55.200)

then everyone will move on to basically

Lex Fridman (48:58.680)

second layer systems that are incredibly centralized.

Lex Fridman (49:01.640)

And that takes away from decentralization

Lex Fridman (49:04.660)

and self sovereignty as well.

Lex Fridman (49:06.380)

So this has been my viewpoints

Lex Fridman (49:08.280)

pretty much the whole time, right?

Vitalik Buterin (49:09.440)

It's like, you need this balance

Lex Fridman (49:11.000)

and going in one direction or the other direction

Vitalik Buterin (49:12.760)

is very unhealthy.

Lex Fridman (49:14.340)

In the Bitcoin case, basically what happened

Vitalik Buterin (49:16.680)

was that Bitcoin originally,

Lex Fridman (49:19.720)

at the very beginning, it didn't really have a block size.

Vitalik Buterin (49:22.100)

It just had an accidental block size of 32 meg,

Lex Fridman (49:25.040)

or block size limit of 32 megabytes

Vitalik Buterin (49:27.200)

because that just happens to be the limit

Lex Fridman (49:29.360)

of the peer to peer messages.

Lex Fridman (49:31.360)

But then...

Lex Fridman (49:32.200)

Interesting, I didn't even know that part.

Vitalik Buterin (49:33.580)

Yeah, but then Satoshi back in 2010

Lex Fridman (49:36.800)

was worried that even 32 megabyte blocks

Vitalik Buterin (49:38.760)

would be too hard to process.

Lex Fridman (49:39.880)

So he put the limit down to one megabyte.

Lex Fridman (49:42.600)

And I think the...

Lex Fridman (49:44.920)

I put, you mean sneaked in there.

Vitalik Buterin (49:47.240)

Yeah, just like made an update to the Bitcoin software

Lex Fridman (49:49.960)

that made blocks bigger than one,

Vitalik Buterin (49:51.480)

I think it's a million bytes invalid.

Lex Fridman (49:54.240)

And I think the impression that most people had at the time

Vitalik Buterin (49:58.420)

is that this is just a temporary safety measure.

Lex Fridman (50:01.380)

And over time, as we become more confident in the software,

Vitalik Buterin (50:05.880)

that limit would be raised somewhat.

Lex Fridman (50:10.760)

But then when the actual usage of the blockchain

Vitalik Buterin (50:16.320)

started going up, and then it started going up

Lex Fridman (50:19.000)

first to 100 kilobytes per block,

Vitalik Buterin (50:21.200)

then to 250 kilobytes per block,

Lex Fridman (50:22.640)

then to 500 kilobytes per block,

Vitalik Buterin (50:25.080)

there started coming out of the woodworks this opinion

Lex Fridman (50:28.480)

that no, that limit should just not be increased.

Lex Fridman (50:31.120)

And then there are all of these attempts at compromising.

Lex Fridman (50:36.120)

First, there was a proposal for 20 megabyte blocks.

Vitalik Buterin (50:40.960)

Then there was the 248 proposal,

Lex Fridman (50:43.120)

which is a bit ironic because the 248 proposal

Vitalik Buterin (50:46.180)

started off being a small block negotiating position.

Lex Fridman (50:49.480)

But then when the big block people came back and said,

Lex Fridman (50:52.040)

hey, aren't we gonna do this?

Lex Fridman (50:53.680)

They're like, oh, no, no, no, we don't want them.

Vitalik Buterin (50:55.040)

We don't want the block size increases anymore.

Lex Fridman (50:57.920)

So there were these two different positions,

Vitalik Buterin (51:01.600)

the small blockers.

Lex Fridman (51:02.680)

I think they valued one megabyte blocks for two reasons.

Vitalik Buterin (51:06.080)

One is that they just really, really believe

Lex Fridman (51:08.360)

in the importance of being able to read the chain.

Lex Fridman (51:10.980)

But two is that a lot of them really believe

Lex Fridman (51:14.360)

in maintaining this norm of never hard forking, right?

Lex Fridman (51:18.560)

So the difference between a hard fork and a soft fork

Lex Fridman (51:21.200)

is basically that in a soft fork,

Vitalik Buterin (51:26.360)

any block that's valid under the new rules

Lex Fridman (51:28.240)

was still valid under the old rules.

Lex Fridman (51:30.040)

So if you have a client that verifies

Lex Fridman (51:31.740)

according to the old rules,

Vitalik Buterin (51:33.000)

then you'll still be able to accept the chain

Lex Fridman (51:35.440)

that follows the new rules.

Vitalik Buterin (51:37.360)

Whereas with a hard fork,

Lex Fridman (51:38.720)

you have to update your code in order to stay on the chain.

Lex Fridman (51:43.160)

And look, they have this belief that soft forks

Lex Fridman (51:48.080)

are kind of either less coercive than hard forks,

Vitalik Buterin (51:51.040)

which by the way, I completely disagree with.

Lex Fridman (51:53.400)

I actually think soft forks are more coercive

Vitalik Buterin (51:55.320)

because basically they force everyone who disagrees

Lex Fridman (51:57.720)

to sort of go along by default.

Vitalik Buterin (51:59.320)

But, or they have this opinion that there's like,

Lex Fridman (52:06.760)

it's more difficult to abuse soft forks

Vitalik Buterin (52:09.680)

to do really mean things like,

Lex Fridman (52:11.040)

or that like completely violate people's expectations,

Vitalik Buterin (52:13.560)

like increasing the supply, which is like,

Lex Fridman (52:16.240)

I think there is some truth to that.

Lex Fridman (52:18.840)

So because of these reasons,

Lex Fridman (52:20.560)

they just say we're only going to do soft forks

Lex Fridman (52:22.440)

and we want to just not do any hard forks.

Lex Fridman (52:25.500)

And they eventually discovered this idea

Vitalik Buterin (52:27.880)

called segregated witness that allows for like

Lex Fridman (52:29.720)

a very tiny block size increase

Vitalik Buterin (52:31.880)

to like the equivalent of about two megabytes

Lex Fridman (52:34.880)

with a soft fork.

Vitalik Buterin (52:36.160)

It's this really like weird and devious trick.

Lex Fridman (52:41.840)

Like basically what they do is they take the signatures

Vitalik Buterin (52:45.080)

of transactions and then they put them outside of the block.

Lex Fridman (52:48.160)

And then they add an extra rule that says that like every,

Vitalik Buterin (52:51.240)

for a block to be valid,

Lex Fridman (52:52.400)

the block has to come with a separate,

Vitalik Buterin (52:54.440)

like basically extension block

Lex Fridman (52:56.000)

that contains all of the transaction signatures, right?

Lex Fridman (52:58.840)

So when you measure it, according to the old rules,

Lex Fridman (53:01.140)

like, hey, it adds up to less than a million,

Lex Fridman (53:02.840)

but actually there's this extension block

Lex Fridman (53:04.500)

that the old protocol doesn't even know about.

Vitalik Buterin (53:06.960)

So.

Lex Fridman (53:07.800)

It's a hack that seemed to work to in a small way

Vitalik Buterin (53:10.600)

extend the size of the block size.

Lex Fridman (53:12.200)

So the small block side was like happy

Vitalik Buterin (53:14.560)

with these very low levels of block size.

Lex Fridman (53:16.120)

And then the big block side wanted to expand to,

Vitalik Buterin (53:19.360)

at the very least go to four megabytes,

Lex Fridman (53:21.080)

then maybe go maybe eight, 20.

Vitalik Buterin (53:23.280)

There's disagreements within there as well.

Lex Fridman (53:26.520)

I definitely was favoring the big side

Vitalik Buterin (53:29.960)

the whole way through, as you can probably tell, but.

Lex Fridman (53:33.960)

Even though, so the argument against the big

Vitalik Buterin (53:36.960)

is that it makes things more centralized.

Lex Fridman (53:40.920)

Yes, because fewer people can run a note

Vitalik Buterin (53:43.080)

that verifies the chain.

Lex Fridman (53:44.280)

And also because any of these things

Vitalik Buterin (53:46.200)

would require a hard fork

Lex Fridman (53:47.320)

and hard forks are inherently risky.

Lex Fridman (53:49.320)

Do you think there's truth to that?

Lex Fridman (53:51.800)

I'm pro hard fork.

Vitalik Buterin (53:52.760)

I think hard forks are actually like

Lex Fridman (53:54.720)

in a political economic sense,

Vitalik Buterin (53:57.440)

they're better than soft forks.

Lex Fridman (53:59.240)

Well, let's, okay, okay.

Vitalik Buterin (54:00.760)

I think that's a beautiful principle as stated

Lex Fridman (54:05.020)

that soft forks may be more coercive than hard forks.

Vitalik Buterin (54:10.680)

This is not just about cryptocurrency.

Lex Fridman (54:13.040)

This is about politics and life.

Vitalik Buterin (54:16.280)

That's fascinating.

Lex Fridman (54:17.100)

So you're okay with hard forks.

Vitalik Buterin (54:20.320)

In fact, you think hard forks is the right way

Lex Fridman (54:23.480)

to make changes because then everybody's forced

Vitalik Buterin (54:26.320)

to make a decision.

Lex Fridman (54:27.720)

Do you accept this change or not

Vitalik Buterin (54:29.100)

as opposed to ideas being sneaked in behind the door

Lex Fridman (54:32.480)

and that decision is forced on you?

Vitalik Buterin (54:34.840)

Exactly, yeah.

Lex Fridman (54:36.140)

Okay, so, but hard forks, some people say,

Vitalik Buterin (54:39.760)

this is when they talk about sort of Ethereum,

Lex Fridman (54:42.240)

is there's some aspect to a hard fork

Vitalik Buterin (54:44.120)

where you're trying to upgrade a,

Lex Fridman (54:46.860)

what is it, airplane while it's flying.

Vitalik Buterin (54:49.440)

And.

Lex Fridman (54:50.760)

I think soft forks are also upgrading an airplane

Vitalik Buterin (54:52.800)

while it's flying.

Lex Fridman (54:53.640)

But it's a smaller upgrades.

Vitalik Buterin (54:56.200)

That's, there's some truth to that.

Lex Fridman (54:58.680)

Like there's definitely a bit more risk of like a split

Vitalik Buterin (55:03.920)

as a result of a hard fork than as a result of a soft fork.

Lex Fridman (55:07.200)

And the split is highly undesirable, right?

Vitalik Buterin (55:10.620)

Well, it depends.

Lex Fridman (55:11.460)

Like if it's a split because of a bug, then that's horrible.

Vitalik Buterin (55:14.160)

If it's a split as a result of political differences,

Lex Fridman (55:16.680)

then I think like a split is better than, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (55:19.760)

one side being forced to basically just like suck it up

Lex Fridman (55:23.240)

and accept the majority position even if it really hates it.

Vitalik Buterin (55:27.200)

Well, there's also political connections

Lex Fridman (55:28.800)

throughout the history of the United States.

Vitalik Buterin (55:30.400)

It's like sometimes groups of people

Lex Fridman (55:33.120)

that strongly disagree with each other

Vitalik Buterin (55:35.680)

should be forced to work it out.

Lex Fridman (55:38.840)

Even if they, even when a split seems like an easy thing

Vitalik Buterin (55:41.560)

in the short term.

Lex Fridman (55:42.640)

It depends.

Lex Fridman (55:43.480)

And I think like, well, for blockchains in particular,

Lex Fridman (55:46.000)

the costs of people being able to like peacefully do their,

Lex Fridman (55:50.080)

go off and do their own thing are much lower, right?

Lex Fridman (55:52.280)

Like, you know, okay, if you have a country

Lex Fridman (55:54.240)

and you have two groups, then like often enough,

Lex Fridman (55:58.400)

like fighting out the new rules requires, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (56:01.160)

a civil war requires everyone to move and so forth.

Lex Fridman (56:03.120)

But no, on a blockchain, like, you know,

Vitalik Buterin (56:05.040)

the costs are lower and so.

Lex Fridman (56:07.640)

So if you were to look at the way things worked out

Vitalik Buterin (56:09.880)

with the block size wars and there was a split,

Lex Fridman (56:13.000)

what is it, Bitcoin Cash and all this?

Vitalik Buterin (56:15.560)

In Bitcoin.

Lex Fridman (56:16.380)

Yeah.

Vitalik Buterin (56:17.220)

Would you, like you looking, putting on your historian hat,

Lex Fridman (56:21.640)

you mentioned offline you like Dan Carlin.

Lex Fridman (56:23.980)

So if Dan Carlin wanted to do an episode

Lex Fridman (56:26.460)

on the block size wars, do you think it could've turned out

Lex Fridman (56:32.480)

better or do you, are you okay with the way it turned out?

Lex Fridman (56:37.680)

I'm definitely disappointed with what happens

Vitalik Buterin (56:40.860)

with the block, with the big block side.

Lex Fridman (56:44.200)

I think the source of my disappointment is that like,

Vitalik Buterin (56:46.960)

one of the things that you notice when just looking at

Lex Fridman (56:50.120)

like this political disagreements generally,

Vitalik Buterin (56:52.560)

especially when you have environments where, you know,

Lex Fridman (56:55.440)

they're authoritarian or like single party dominated

Lex Fridman (56:57.920)

and then there's some opposition party

Lex Fridman (57:00.280)

and the opposition often has like very legitimate grievances.

Lex Fridman (57:03.420)

But at the same time, the thing you notice is that often

Lex Fridman (57:05.680)

enough the opposition just sucks, right?

Vitalik Buterin (57:07.200)

Like it just doesn't have, you know, political capacity.

Lex Fridman (57:10.280)

It doesn't have like the ability to come up with policy

Vitalik Buterin (57:13.320)

because it's entire culture is like designed around

Lex Fridman (57:17.720)

resisting much more than it's designed around like,

Vitalik Buterin (57:19.960)

you know, actually debating serious policy trade offs.

Lex Fridman (57:23.240)

And I worry or I guess not so much worry

Vitalik Buterin (57:27.200)

because it's already happened.

Lex Fridman (57:28.280)

I unfortunately think that Bitcoin Cash ended up

Lex Fridman (57:31.920)

being a victim of this, right?

Lex Fridman (57:34.040)

Like first, no, there was a split with Bitcoin Cash.

Lex Fridman (57:37.120)

And then of course, Craig Wright came in

Lex Fridman (57:39.160)

and you know, Craig Wright was this basically scammer

Vitalik Buterin (57:43.240)

who just keeps on pretending that he is Satoshi Nakamoto,

Lex Fridman (57:46.280)

the inventor of Bitcoin.

Lex Fridman (57:47.920)

Hey, Craig Wright's legal team, do you hear me?

Lex Fridman (57:49.960)

Yes, I still think your client is a scammer.

Lex Fridman (57:52.200)

So sue me.

Lex Fridman (57:53.240)

This is definitely gonna be death for a search

Vitalik Buterin (57:55.160)

because I gotta ask you about Craig.

Lex Fridman (57:56.960)

I guess these people have been contacting me

Lex Fridman (57:58.800)

and I'm trying to figure out like,

Lex Fridman (58:00.200)

what is up with this human being?

Lex Fridman (58:02.520)

So for people who don't know, there's somebody who is,

Lex Fridman (58:05.460)

let's start this Satoshi Nakamoto, who is the creator

Vitalik Buterin (58:09.920)

of Bitcoin, who's anonymous.

Lex Fridman (58:11.720)

And actually most really big people

Vitalik Buterin (58:14.760)

in the cryptocurrency space do not like yourself

Lex Fridman (58:20.120)

and others do not dare claim that they are even

Vitalik Buterin (58:23.240)

for fun Satoshi Nakamoto.

Lex Fridman (58:25.200)

In fact, if Satoshi Nakamoto is still alive

Lex Fridman (58:27.320)

and is like, if say you were Satoshi Nakamoto,

Lex Fridman (58:29.800)

it seems like the thing he would do is probably

Vitalik Buterin (58:32.000)

or she is trying to remain anonymous.

Lex Fridman (58:35.760)

On the flip side of that, there's a guy named Craig Wright

Vitalik Buterin (58:39.320)

who continually keeps claiming that he is in fact

Lex Fridman (58:42.120)

Satoshi Nakamoto and keeps suing a lot of people.

Lex Fridman (58:45.920)

So on him, if we could just linger on him,

Lex Fridman (58:49.420)

what do you make of this character?

Lex Fridman (58:52.120)

What are we supposed to make of this character?

Lex Fridman (58:54.420)

Should he be ignored?

Lex Fridman (58:56.120)

Is there any possible truth to his claims?

Lex Fridman (58:59.880)

What do you make of him?

Vitalik Buterin (59:01.120)

The analogy that's at the top of my head

Lex Fridman (59:03.600)

will get a bit political, but that's fine.

Vitalik Buterin (59:06.000)

You've had Michael Malice.

Lex Fridman (59:07.600)

So I guess I view Craig Wright

Vitalik Buterin (59:10.160)

as being kind of like a Donald Trump figure

Lex Fridman (59:12.480)

in that he's not very intellectual,

Lex Fridman (59:15.160)

but I think he gets a big audience

Lex Fridman (59:17.320)

because he says things that play to the resentments

Vitalik Buterin (59:23.480)

that people have and he says things

Lex Fridman (59:25.080)

that people wants to hear.

Vitalik Buterin (59:27.840)

Like in the wake of this block size war,

Lex Fridman (59:30.120)

the big blockers did feel very disenchanted.

Vitalik Buterin (59:32.640)

They felt that Bitcoin always had this vision

Lex Fridman (59:35.360)

that we were supposed to just keep increasing

Vitalik Buterin (59:37.000)

the block size and Bitcoin is peer to peer cash.

Lex Fridman (59:39.200)

It says so in the white paper.

Lex Fridman (59:40.520)

And then this elitist clique of core devs

Lex Fridman (59:43.480)

just came in and said, no, no, no,

Vitalik Buterin (59:45.560)

we're gonna impose this totally different vision.

Lex Fridman (59:47.720)

And if you ever want your scalability,

Vitalik Buterin (59:49.240)

you'll have to wait for us to create

Lex Fridman (59:51.000)

this totally unproven fancy technology

Vitalik Buterin (59:53.400)

called the lightning network

Lex Fridman (59:54.400)

that works under completely different principles.

Lex Fridman (59:56.920)

And they were very angry at this.

Lex Fridman (59:58.440)

And I mean, I think a lot of that anger is justified,

维塔利克·布特林谈以太坊2.0